England v Scotland (Channel 4 from 7pm)

AS ENGLAND kick off their Euro 2017 campaign tonight against Scotland, you have to admire the build-up to the tournament from a media and fan perspective.

That’s not to say that women’s football has reached a point where it fully gets the recognition it deserves, there is still a long way to go, but this should be seen as the benchmark.

Walking down the street you now see billboards of the players, as Channel 4 promotes their coverage of the tournament. There are television ads hyping tonight’s game and a few newspapers have actually run stories about the players. It seems people are finally starting to wake up and appreciate the Lionesses.

The Euro 2017 Panini sticker album was a huge step and it’s been great to see children and adults collecting stickers, using social media in an attempt to complete the book and continue to emphasise that England are playing in a major tournament, one they have a very good chance of winning.

It remains to be seen how much the public will get behind the Lionesses, we will know over the next few weeks when the viewing figures for the games are released.

But given how many people stayed up till the early hours of the morning to watch England lose in the 2015 World Cup semi-final, I am hopeful that those figures can be matched.

It peaked at 2.4 million viewers on BBC One with average viewing figures of 1.7m.

What has been disappointing is the coverage the other teams have recieved in the press. If this was the men’s tournament, papers would have a report from every game, regardless of interest in the teams playing.

The opening games of major tournaments are treated as huge spectacles, with TV companies having extended shows. This wasn’t the case when the Netherlands played Norway on Sunday night.

And it wasn’t like there were unknown players on the pitch. The only goal of the game was scored by Liverpool’s Shanice van de Sanden.

Channel 4 have the rights to show England and Scotland, but that is it.

Germany are one of my favourite teams to watch but I have no way of catching their games.

Compare that to the coverage international youth tournaments have received this summer and you can see why fans of women’s football have once again been short-changed.

For us as supporters of not just the national team but the sport as a whole, it needs more publicity. That isn’t groundbreaking, people have been calling for this for years.

There has been a gradual change, Fifa video games now have women’s international teams on them and maybe within the next few years we will get the Women’s Super League among others on there.

It would be great to get the WSL on the Football Manager series — it should be a matter of when not if.

And the fact that someone picked up the rights to show England and Scotland would have been a dream just a decade ago.

The clamour and hunger is there for more women’s football to be reported on more, let’s hope that Euro 2017 is just the start of increased coverage.