Dame Sue Campbell, Director Women's Football at the FA

Desert Island Discs

• Episode: Dame Sue Campbell, Director Women's Football at the FA
• Website: Desert Island Discs
• Feed URL: http://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/b006qnmr.rss
• Duration: 00:52:52
• Published: 2020-01-19 13:00

Dame Sue Campbell is the Director of Women’s Football at the Football Association. The women’s game has become increasingly popular recently and last year the England team - the Lionesses - made it to the World Cup semi-finals. Born in 1948, just outside Nottingham, Sue was sporty from an early age, even changing schools to allow her to play football. She became a PE teacher in Manchester and realised how transformative sport could be, increasing self-esteem, motivation and self-belief. In the mid-1980s, after learning about excellence in sport at Loughborough University and playing netball for England as well as dabbling in the pentathlon, Sue became deputy chief executive (and a year later chief executive) of the National Coaching Foundation, which provided education for coaches at both ends of the spectrum, from parent volunteers to elite coaches. Ten years later, in 1995, she co-founded the Youth Sport Trust to set up a sports activity programme for every primary school in the country. It was hugely successful: in 2003 only 23% of school children were getting two hours of PE a week. By 2008, this figure had risen to 95%. In 2010, the coalition government cut their funding. By this time, back at the elite end of the sporting spectrum, Sue was also in charge of UK Sport, where she presided over Team GB's biggest Olympic medal haul in living memory, at the London 2012 games. In 2016, she took her current job as head of Women’s Football at the FA. She has also been a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords since 2008. BOOK CHOICE: The Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela LUXURY ITEM: A photo album CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Music Of My Heart by Gloria Estefan And *N SYNC Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale