For any woman – let alone a black woman – to take on the pale, male and stale suits of the governing body who had little interest in or regard for women's football, and demand investment, demand a youth structure, demand central contracts, demand an elite environment in which female footballers could develop, demand parity in medical expertise, should not be underestimated.
"I think any elite environment is elite because it's difficult," Allen says.
The DBU said on its website that it did not feel it was wise for children as young as six to be in an elite training environment, particularly if the child was eventually to be rejected.
Bespectacled, pasty and scrawny, the 19-year-old kid from Blackrock College could not have looked more out of place in an elite rugby environment – until he first passed a rugby ball, and everyone's jaws hit the floor.
No matter who was in the right, picking sides is to overlook an overriding point: surely this should not occur in an elite sporting environment.
City's chief executive officer Mark Ashton said the revamp would provide the club's academy and first team with "an elite performance environment".
In addition to technical, job-related, hands-on skills, the future of work will entail deliberate development of "influence skills," which includes emotional intelligence, communication, self-awareness and critical thinking abilities to better operate in an elite team environment.
"His talents brought him into an elite academic environment that none of us has seen," McNally, Joey's Little League coach, recalled.
Unfortunately, from a practical perspective, the ITS requires greater set-up and calibration time and more practitioner input and are not as portable as MDL, making it slightly less attractive as a monitoring tool in an elite, applied environment.
As Dave Brailsford took over from Keen, harnessing the increased financial backing from UK Sport to create the most impressive elite environment that British sport had seen, Hoy was both a prime mover and beneficiary.
"In the elite environment, it is talked about, it's just not advertised particularly," she said.
