Baby steps…
Don’t forget, women’s football has grown exponentially from a wholly male-dominated sport and will, of course, have terms that reflect that heritage.
The callouts within a game are for speed and understanding, but titles, like Man of the Match are simply wrong in the women’s game. While, as a man, I’d be quite happy to call it Woman of the Match in the women’s game, I believe the desire for equality within the game is driving the non-gender terminology. And, given it was already in use in many ways, it’s a simple, logical, entirely non-controversial accommodation that can be easily embraced.
There are real problems in football. Thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
The acceptance of change is a process, and there will be those who may resist the change and those who inadvertently revert to pre-change terminology, but neither will change the eventual outcome.
As to “man on” and “man mark,” they may well become “historic” holdovers within thd game for the reasons cited above, but we shouldn’t withhold, or not embrace, the change simply because of such ingrained efficiencies.
In short, it’s really a non-event that is one of the least controversial equality changes sought.