Words by Tamara El-Halawani & Jeffrey Arthur
Jules Breach is one of football’s best presenters – and she’s on a mission to put women in football on the global map.
The beautiful game has long had a sketchy relationship with women. That is to say, it’s never really treated them well. For forever and a day, football’s big bosses treated women’s football – and women in football – as an afterthought. And though the beautiful game is awash with more cash than it knows what to do with, few women have found themselves at the receiving end of football’s global boom. Until now, you could count the number of female coaches on one hand; televised women’s games were reserved for rare, ‘special’ occasions; and you’d probably have more luck dining with your favourite fictional character than coming across a female football presenter.
But sporing pendulums swing – and Jules Breach is one of the female voices swinging it in the right direction. Fresh from a podcast recording, she spoke to us about all things football, presenting – and the need to do more for women in sport. Catching Breach during the footballing season is an impossible task. The season’s calendar is a tough one, and she’s usually busy hopping from studio to studio, presenting games and shows for the biggest media names in the world.
Brighton-born with experience of travelling the world, her early years mirror football’s global reach. At a young age, she moved to Mauritius with her parents, before making her return home at five. “The first language I actually spoke was French”, she says, – it was the main language spoken in Mauritius. At age eight, she counted Jamaica’s vibrant, sunny island as home, before making the trip back to England.
Dotting around the world does well for perspective. Unconfined by the constraints of one particular culture and view of the world, Breach had time to discover the pleasures of life which, for her, was sport: “My mum and dad encouraged everything; it was kind of like trying everything and seeing what you love.” She couldn’t place exactly where or when the love affair with football began – and as we spoke, I got the feeling she wasn’t much interested in doing so. It was “always on at home” and she never “felt like it was discouraged.”
Jamaica’s rich, vibrant outdoors gave Breach room to explore – the island’s great outdoors, filled with busy streets and endless activity, has a unique ability to convert the world’s strongest introverts. It converted her, and she loved it: “ Everyone’s outdoors all the time and you’re always kind of doing something outdoorsy, which often relates to some kind of sport, whether that’s cricket, football, tennis, whatever it might be.”
“My mum and dad encouraged everything. It was kind of like trying everything and seeing what you love.”
Sport aside, there was also reading, something she tells us she enjoyed growing up (“I was always quite good at reading!”). And upon noticing her natural talent, everyone would force her into a recital or two: “I would always do the readings at church. And whenever we had family parties, mum would always let you get up and, I don’t know, say stuff.” When the time came to figure out what she wanted to do, becoming a professional athlete was top of the list: “I wanted to be a professional athlete.” When it didn’t work out, she settled for a combination of her two passions: sport and media. From then, she describes her path to presenting as a mix of hard work and a “few things…falling in place.”
Learning how to present well was the easy part. By her own confession, she’s an avid learner: “I’m like a sponge and I’m a bit of a geek. I love learning and I love watching other people and just looking at other people’s styles and how they do things and taking little bits from everyone and sort of being like, ‘Oh, I really liked how they did that’ or ‘I didn’t like how they did that’, and using that to formulate my own kind of voice and style.”
And style she has. Presenting football is no easy task. Eager-eyed fans stand ready to critique the tiniest mistake – and God save any presenter who dares offer an unwanted opinion about a losing team’s future fortunes or favourite players. In the age of internet trolls and global audiences, doing the job well requires finesse and talent, two things Breach possesses in abundance. It’s what attracted the big media names, including BT, to the Brighton-born presenter. Getting it right doesn’t mean being overly accomplished. And she’s keen to make the distinction between the two: “I thought I had to be really polished. I thought I had to speak perfect English… But because it’s a live sports show, anything can happen. You quickly learn like that. It’s actually impossible to be completely polished.”
No football fan is interested in scripted punditry. We live for the off-the-cuff moments, the kind that makes cameramen, producers and off-screen executives squeal with nervousness. The beautiful game is also an emotional one. And after the on-field referee blows his final whistle, the presenter is charged with facilitating the extra-extra time, a game of pundits fighting to get their opinions out. It’s something Breach does with relevant ease. It has everything to do with talent and nothing to do with gender.
Gender, though, is a topic she can’t escape. Women – and women in football – are becoming increasingly visible. That’s a good thing – but more of it is needed. “It’s so much more common now”, she acknowledges, whilst admitting “it’s taken a long time to get here.” Football authorities are slowly waking up to the true power and popularity of women’s participation in the sport, and it’s in large part thanks to people like Breach that the ball is rolling nicely.
And whilst the majority supports the changes and progress made, football has and always will contain the idiotic minority. In the age of the internet, they’ve taken the form of online trolls, keyboard warriors ever ready to offer up unwanted and abusive opinions. It’s not something that phases or discourages Jules Breach. That’s not to say those trolls aren’t harmful. The process of change always involves friction between new and old views: “Some people, they’re just not used to it. They’re just a bit like, hang on a minute, like, you know, back in my day, it was the blokes that presented the football, you know, that kind of archaic view.”
That leads to female presenters being unfairly judged, and it’s something she has personal experience of: “I think the negative side is that people do feel like they can say what they want and kind of not be not be held accountable for it.” She’s optimistic about the future, pointing to examples of more and more women entering the sport presenting world. “Females are just as passionate about football as males are”, she tells me, and it’s about time they were given the platform to illustrate that passion.
” Some people, they’re just not used to it. They’re just a bit like, hang on a minute, like, you know, back in my day, it was the blokes that presented football, you know, that kind of archaic view.”
To round off, I asked Breach about her personal career highlights, favourite players and everything in between. She can’t and won’t choose a favourite career moment – there’s been too many. She had no such problem, though, picking out her favourite player: “Steven Gerrard. Growing up, he was my, kind of, first football icon who I just sort of loved.” Born in Brighton, she counts herself as a big fan of the Seagulls – and makes absolutely no apologies for it.
Listening to Jules Breach recount her journey to presenting will make you smile. In all we spoke about, one quote stood out: “There were very few women who did that [presenting] when I was growing up.” Things look a lot different for girls growing up nowadays – thanks to her.