IF only Claire Judd had a pound for every chanted request to get parts of her anatomy out “for the lads”.

In the end she came to accept the inevitability of hearing it at grounds up and down the country when she was a first team physio for Burnley Football Club.

“It’s old hat and goes kind of over my head,” said the 34-year-old. Sad, but true. She agrees. But although in a minority in that workplace she is almost certainly not in isolation with her views.

Judd arrived at Turf Moor in the summer of 2005. Society has hardly progressed since then. If anything, judging by the vile abuse hurled at Chelsea first team doctor Eva Carneiro - which cannot be repeated in this newspaper - it has regressed.

“I was disgusted by what they said to her. It is awful,” said Judd, who worked for the Clarets for almost three years.

“She’s a doctor. Would these people who have shouted that out go to their GP surgery and sit there and when their female doctor comes into the waiting room and calls them for their appointment feel it’s appropriate for the waiting room to do a rousing rendition of an obscene song?

“It’s not at all appropriate!

“We wouldn’t accept it in that instance so why should we accept it in a sporting arena?

“She’s somebody’s daughter. I don’t know if she’s married or if she’s a mum herself but would those people who have said that be happy if it was their mum, their sister, their girlfriend, their daughter having those kind of things said to them?

“If I’d been subjected to that and then had to walk back to my car at the end of the game with groups of fans outside, I’d have been seriously frightened for my safety.

“If that happened in the street people would be arrested for it.”

Judd added: “There are crowds at rugby but it’s normal for fans to see women working in that environment. Rugby League is traditionally a working class sport like football is. But their fans don’t behave like that so why are they behaving like that in football?

“It makes me wonder if people who are going to do that are drawn to football because they can get away with it.

“I think the FA really need to look at other sports and at how they’re dealing with sexism, or racism or anything like that. It doesn’t matter what the ‘ism’ is, or if it’s homophobia. It doesn’t happen in other sports so why’s it happening in football?” If similar obscenities were aimed at Judd, she was never aware of them, although when stood by the tunnel in front of the away end when Burnley hosted Leicester in 2005 a man who she estimated was in his mid-30s leaned over the barrier to shout obscenities.

“It was pure anger towards me,” the mother of two recalled.

There were plenty of other obstacles she faced while working in football though.

“I had a couple of bad experiences with stewards at Turf Moor,” she said, describing how one blocked access to the tunnel to her as she tried to go onto the pitch to do her job, and the lewd behaviour of another. She reported both incidents.

Derogatory comments were posted on a message board thread, which although she now runs her own business - Working Injury Management - give her cause for concern if they are one day read by her two daughters, or any potential future employers. “I think the exact words were ‘she’s rougher than a plasterer’s radio’ and then commenting about being promiscuous and being a football physio.

“If my daughters, when they grow up, ever wanted to Google what mummy did as a job and find me and find those kind of comments, what does it say?

“Daddy used to be a professional rugby player, but there aren’t those kind of comments on there about him, so why as a female working in the sporting arena do you have to put up with those kind of comments from people?”

Other problems involved practicalities.

“But in terms of matchdays when we were away I wouldn’t have any shower facilities so if I got muddy, tough. I just used to put my tracksuit on afterwards and travel home,” she said.

“It wasn’t very pleasant, especially if it was a long trip.

“A lot of the dressing rooms weren’t particularly pleasant anyway.

“Colchester’s old ground was the worst I’ve been to I think.

“The dressing room was tiny, so we’d set up treatment beds in the toilet and shower area.

“I remember one Saturday afternoon, I was assessing Chris McCann’s ankle stood in a urinal stinking of wee and I just thought ‘People think that my job is glamorous’. It was vile.”

Judd welcomes the month-long campaigns #SheBelongs and #ShameOnTheGame, launched by the Women in Football organisation to encourage and raise awareness of females working in the industry and tackling discrimination.

While she reflects on her own time in football positively, it is not a job she would return to now.

“I have two children and I don’t really think you can work in professional football and be a mother at the same time,” she said.

“Even though I have a career at the moment – I’ve just started my own business and I can manage that – I don’t think it would work. It’s a different demand.

“I can’t ever imagine ringing in and saying ‘I’m really sorry, we’re struggling with childcare today, I can’t come in’.

“It just wouldn’t be acceptable or have any flexibility with that whatsoever.”

But Judd insists she would not discourage her daughters if they showed an interest in a career in football.

“It’s a great thing to do, you get to have experiences you wouldn’t normally have,” she said.

“I was never going to be a professional sports person but I got to experience that kind of life through doing my job.

“You get to see some fantastic things that you wouldn’t normally experience like travelling on a team coach, seeing injuries as they happen, which you don’t usually do if you’re in a treatment room or working in a hospital where people come into you.

“You see it happen there and then.

“I’d say ‘go for it’,” she said. “Just have a tough skin.”