GK Barry was chosen to conduct the draw for the Women’s League Cup on Tuesday evening, but the TikTok live stream went terribly, prompting a backlash and an official apology
The Women’s Super League has been forced to apologise after the decision to hire GK Barry to conduct the League Cup draw backfired spectacularly. The influencer, who appeared on last year’s version of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, has been slammed for her unprofessional approach to the draw.
GK Barry, whose real name is Grace Keeling, was chosen to do the draw with her partner Ella Rutherford, who plays for Portsmouth. It was hoped that she could attract a new audience to the Women’s League Cup because she has over 4.1m followers on TikTok and 1.3m on Instagram.
The draw for the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the competition, which is sponsored by Subway, was done live on TikTok at 6pm on Tuesday. It quickly descended into chaos however, with GK Barry’s attempts at humour and the difficulty in following the draw, with no graphics on-screen, creating a shambles.
GK Barry was tasked with drawing the balls from a bag, while Rutherford read out the team names and wrote down the ties slightly off camera. “What I’m going to do is give it a shake and a spank for luck, bit of fun,” GK Barry said at the start, before hitting the bag into her backside.
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The 26-year-old also joked about “lesbians handling balls” and ended the stream with an innuendo about Subway’s sandwiches by saying: “Even if you’re a lesbian, get a footlong.”
Told by Rutherford that Chelsea had been drawn away, GK Barry replied: “I don’t know what that means!” She later asked what colour shirts Chelsea and Liverpool played in, but it was her comments and actions around Tottenham that caused the biggest issues.
Firstly, GK Barry said “what do we think of Tottenham?” – an anti-Spurs chant popularised by Arsenal fans. She then drew Tottenham’s ball out of the bag before putting it back in and saying: “Am I allowed to do that? I’ve done it now, it’s too late. Oh I picked up the same ball.”
It is understood that an adjudicator was present off screen and they confirmed that GK Barry had indeed picked up the same ball again, so as not to change the result of the draw. Had she not selected the same ball, then a re-draw would have been required.
Tottenham have since received an apology from WSL Football. Clips of the chaotic draw have gone viral on social media, with many women’s football fans furious at the lack of professionalism.
“Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to have a ‘social media influencer’ and her girlfriend doing the draw? An insult to female footballers of all ages and their clubs,” one fan wrote on X.
“That’s not professional whatsoever. How can you even call that a draw when she’s looking in the bag?” another fan questioned. A third simply stated: “This is diabolical. I can’t believe this is even real.”
GK Barry is yet to comment on the backlash, but has hinted that she’s aware of the negative reaction by posting a meme of a dog doing a sideways look on her Instagram story.
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