The appears to have avoided a serious confrontation with Britain's drug testing authorities over their new doping regulations, approved by the FA Council last week.
As previously discussed here, it seems the potential threat of losing £26m of grass roots funding has been enough to sharpen minds at the FA, and that their new regulations, as yet unpublished, will allow for a testing pool which will include at least some England squad level players, as had demanded.
I gather there are still discussions taking place, but the main issues are now resolved, and UK Sport aren't about to announce the FA's suspension from the drug testing programme.
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Best of luck to the British men's and women's football teams at the .
They've both reached the semi-finals of the competition, the women after a nail-biting penalty shoot-out against Brazil, the men under similar circumstances against France. They'll play Japan and Ukraine respectively with a place in the final at stake.
Hope they make it. I wonder if the are rooting for them too?
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The report by the throws up a series of statistics that demand further examination, not just the headline fact that only one in five of those on the boards of our sporting governing bodies is a woman, and that a quarter of them don't have women on the board at all... (among them football, cycling and rugby union.)
Delve a little deeper, and there are several more arresting numbers. More than 80% of women, it is claimed, do . That's shocking.
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I'd be surprised if the wasn't the main talking point at this weekend's gathering of the .
The Council will rightly be concerned about the FA's future revenue stream, although finding a way through the TV rights maze and coming out the other side without taking a serious financial whacking is a headache for the Executive Board rather than the ultimate decision-making body of the English game.
One decision the Council will have to make, however, could potentially cost the FA tens of millions of pounds.
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