The Sun-Herald

Girls Gone Wild

On Thursday, I entered an alternate universe.

"DO NOT BEHAVE IN AN IMPROPER MANNER!" boomed the (female) ground announcer.

"IF YOU WANT TO DANCE - GO TO A DISCO!"

"MORAL GUARDIANS - REPORT ANY UNDUE BEHAVIOUR!"

I was watching a match played by the Iranian national women's team.

Except, because I'm male, I was unable to be in the Tehran stadium hosting the game and instead had to watch the somewhat historic occasion unfold on a cinema screen.

The game in question took place two years ago on April, 28, 2006.

At the time, the football world's attention was on the upcoming men's World Cup but, away from the headlines, something of a quiet revolution was taking place in a small stadium in Tehran in front of less than 1000 spectators.

The game, between Iran and an amateur women's team from Berlin, Germany, was a year in the making.

Marlene Assmann, a defender with the German team, had learned from a friend that the Iranian women's national team rarely played matches, could only train behind closed doors, and that under local Islamic law, women were not even allowed into stadiums to watch men's matches.

Inspired by a sense of adventure and solidarity, she helped organise for her own team to eventually travel to Tehran and play Iran.

It was no easy task.

The game became a journey deep into a world of impossibility (and that was just early attempts to get world governing body FIFA and potential oil-rich sponsors to support such a game).

Football, though, can often be bigger than politics and the match eventually did take place.

This victory over politics and bureaucracy (if not fundamentalism) was documented in a film, Football Under Cover, made by Assmann, her brother David, and Iranian director Ayat Najafi.

As Iranian player Narmilla Fathi explains: "In Iran, everything and nothing is impossible at the same time," she says.

The film premiered at the International Film Festival in Berlin in February and will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York this month.

An Australian release is unconfirmed but you can watch a trailer here.

Good films - and good stories - should take us to places that we can't ordinarily go and so the cameras of Football Under Cover take us into the lives of the Iranian players.

The opening scene is of a player performing training drills on her own, juggling, and practicing trapping, in a dusty Tehran park, her headscarf pulled tight over her head.

Later, we meet Niloofar Basir, who has to zip a tracksuit up to her neck and pull a baseball cap tight over her head to disguise herself as male - so that, just once, she can train without a hijab.

But underneath the covers, it turns out the Iranian girls are pretty much like people we already know.

Basir wears a number '10' necklace and idolises David Beckham. He visits her in dreams where he speaks to her in Persian.

Narmilla Fathi practices with her mother, herself a former player, in the dusty streets behind their apartment block.

She has real skill, if not the pristine suburban facilities of her counterparts in Australia, the US, and Europe.

The national team's training sessions take place behind curtains in an indoor hall.

Cameras are not allowed. Neither are men.

"Watch your headscarves," a coach warns her players as they leave a training session. "They are filming."

It's a long way from the experiences of the Australian and American women's teams who play two friendlies over the next week in the US.

Even after the relative success of the Australian team at the Women's World Cup last year, the game in Australia still faces a lot of challenges.

But there's nothing - nothing - like the obstacles the Iranian girls have to overcome to simply play, let alone be recognised, within their own country.

"There are so many girls that want to be footballers in Iran that the government was forced to give them a stadium where they could play," says director Ayat Najafi. "But obviously no one was allowed to see them or hear from them."

It's not difficult to imagine what Iran's ultra-conservative religious leaders might think of the nude calendar that the Australian women's team posed for to promote their team back in 1999.

But, when getting a piece of grass to train on is considered something of a moral victory, it would be intriguing to discover the views of the Iranian players on the Matildas' exploits.

Women's football does has its supporters in Iran, one prominent fan being local superstar Ali Daei, a World Cup nemesis for Australia back in 1997.

Daei believes "the most beautiful women play soccer" and helped provide suitable (ie, cover all) team strips for the game.

The game between Iran and the Germans eventually took place with FIFA's approval and accompanying pomp and ceremony.

There were female match officials, female ground announcers and dignitaries, and an all-female crowd.

It was Girls Gone Wild turned upside down.

The fan's unbridled enthusiasm irritated authorities, who announced that low morals (ie, making noise) was ill advised.

But like any crowd anywhere, the fans ignored orders and continued to shout for their home team to "kick the Germans back home".

Women are barred from watching men's matches in Iran because, apparently, the stadiums are deemed too dangerous.

Men were barred from watching this game played by women.

Danger was not the reason unless joy and happiness is a high-risk activity.

Football Under Cover, though shows that the sport, stripped bare, is pretty much the same everywhere.

My team rules. Your team sucks.

But we all just want to play.

www.football-under-cover.com