“So I said ‘how can we work together so I can stay in the game? How can we work together when Ian is not available, you give me a call or what can we do?’
“This is what I think black people should do, at the highest levels we need to strategise, we need to really help each other. We can get sidelined very quickly. I went to him and I was vulnerable, I said: ‘Listen, I need your help, I need Ian’s influence.’
“I had that meeting with his agent, a month went by and I was like ‘what’s going on?’ so I messaged him and said: ‘Did you manage to have a chat with ITV?’ He was very dismissive, didn’t really want to help me, was a bit like: ‘Listen, it’s not going to work.’ I fully expected Ian to use his influence to keep me in the game. I’ve seen him do it with others, he did it with Gary Lineker at the BBC.
“There’s nothing that would make me think he wouldn’t do that for me, because you’re the ally, you’re ‘Uncle’. So the question to you is, why didn’t he do that for me? I say all this to say, you don’t want to help me, you don’t want to use your influence, you don’t want to be an ally for me in the most difficult time in my career and that’s fine, that’s cool.
“But nine months later, when I’ve been off screen and I’ve seen that you’re doing the games and you’ve cracked on, the fact of the matter is you have the level of influence to say: ‘I don’t need to do every game, what Eni means to women’s football is much more important than me doing all of these games. Eni is one of the main characters of women’s football, I know that this is bigger for her. It’s going to be harder for her to get this opportunity in men’s football.’
“That’s what I expect from an ally – sacrifice. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t have this brand that says ally, that’s not my experience of you. When it comes down to it, you never really tried.”
