At The Heart Of a Media Storm For Doing The Job You Love | Jacqui Oatley

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Jacqui Oatley is a hugely respected sports journalist, commentator and presenter who in 2007 became the first woman ever to commentate on Match Of The Day. In fact, her career is full of media firsts for women, although all she ever wanted to do was the job she loved.

A football obsessive from a young age, a serious knee injury in her twenties led to her reappraising her career. She retrained as a sports journalist, she worked her way up from non-league football, to the Premier League on Radio Five Live.

An opportunity to commentate on Britain’s flagship football highlights programme blew up into a huge national media story with her at the centre.

As the first woman to ever call a match on the show, she faced a torrent of publicity, criticism and, frequently, abuse.

Jacqui tells her story vividly and honestly from the inside, describing what it was like to be at the centre of a cultural moment, how she had to develop a thick skin to get through the aftermath, how things have progressed and why there’s still work to do across the board.

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