By Eilidh MacGlone (National Library of Scotland) and Aled Betts (National Library of Wales) 

The UEFA Women's Euro 2022 competition is taking place across England from July 6 to July 31, 2022. We are collecting websites about the 2022 UEFA Women’s EURO from around the UK.

You can view the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection here:  

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4278 

Although Scotland and Wales didn’t qualify for this year's tournament, football fans in both countries will be getting involved in the celebrations. In this blog post we hear about what content the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales have added to the UK Web Archive collection. 

National Library of Scotland 
As Scotland supporters are aware, we won’t be competing in this year’s Euros (ah, the 95th minute!). Yet, our collecting has captured a valiant qualifying effort, through news sites and the national team's social media. Caroline Weir is one player keeping an eye on the competition, writing an online column with some collegiate support for old Man City teammates. Also evident is that the writing we are collecting describes a sport reaching larger audiences.

Teams are competing in national stadiums – a departure from the smaller arenas we found collecting the last Women’s World Cup. It can be seen in the team taking advantage of this to share a broad message with more football fans. Captain Rachel Corsie giving an example, of wearing pride colours on her captain’s armband at Scotland’s game with Hungary. The national team are now looking to plans for its second World Cup next year, players are looking to a new Scottish Women's Premier League, starting in August. We will continue to preserve Scottish women's football, preserving growing interest in the sport.

National Library of Wales 
Wales were agonisingly close on qualifying for UEFA Women's Euro England 2022, which would have been a historic moment as would have meant Wales reaching their first ever major Tournament. Northern Ireland narrowly secured the play-off place at the expense of Wales as their head-to-head away goal count was superior! As the Euros are being held in England, National Library of Wales focus will be archiving sites looking at the competition from a Welsh perspective.

Women’s Football in Wales has never been stronger as the National team maintain their push for qualification for next year’s World Cup and the huge rise in domestic clubs over the last 20 years providing opportunities to so many. This is reflected by the many websites and twitter feeds that have been archived by the National Library of Wales. For instance, we archive the FAW website and Twitter account, the Twitter feeds of our most famous players, archive Premier clubs websites as well as delving into grassroots football by archiving Domestic League websites and we will look at adding many more sites to the rich collection that we already have.

Get involved with preserving women’s football online with the UK Web Archive
The UK Web Archive works across the six UK legal Deposit Libraries and with other external partners to try and bridge gaps in our subject expertise. But we can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own, we need your help to ensure that information, discussions and creative output related to the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 are preserved for future generations. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form.