With just a few days of 2025 left, we gather round the microphones to look back over the past year, a period that saw England win the Women’s Euros again, Crystal Palace upset the odds by beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final, and the Independent Football Regulator came into force.

In this episode, Graham Miller is joined by Kelly Simmons, Dave Kitson and Fair Game CEO Niall Couper.

Kelly is the former director of the women’s professional game at the FA and now a consultant and director at Women In Football.

Dave was a key figure as Reading got to the Premier League in 2006 and he currently coaches Maidenhead United Women.

Follow Fair Game on X (yes, we still call it Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

There isn’t much that makes us as passionate as the World Cup and now the draw has been made our pulses are definitely racing.

Joining Graham Miller to talk about the draw on this episode are:

Janie Frampton OBE, one of only eight FIFA female referee instructors, Tom Watt, football author and broadcaster, and we get an American perspective from Mike Smith, executive director of Burnley.

We talk about World Cup ticket prices, Cristiano Ronaldo’s suspended ban and the reduced reliance on votes in FIFA’s decision-making processes, but we also look forward to the exciting matches that have been thrown up, the countries we’re looking forward to watching, and which teams we think might win it this time around.

Follow Fair Game on X (yes, we still call it Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

At a time when football clubs are using data to make more and more decisions, there are some statistics that are clearly not being noticed or addressed.

In men's professional football, 43% of players are black and yet only 4% of the former players employed in the game are black, revealing a lack of diversity among decision makers and people with significant influence.

On this episode, we talk to:
Monique Choudhuri, a former non-executive director at Brentford and currently Managing Director of Versify Consulting,
Delroy Corinaldi, co-founder of the Black Footballers Partnership,
and Brian Deane, former England international striker, the man who scored the first-ever Premier League goal in 1992, and former manager of Norwegian club Sarpsborg 08.

Follow Fair Game on X (yes, we still call it Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.