As this year's Fifa World Cup continues to dominate global conversations, the UK's first-ever female national newspaper Sports Editor, and a local woman has created a six-part video series on YouTube for "absolute beginners".

Alison Kervin OBE, who currently lives in Hampton Court and previously lived in Teddington, began her journalism career at The Times before working at various publications, including Rugby World and The Telegraph.

She is now working at The Mail on Sunday as the UK's first ever Sports Editor at a national paper.

In an exclusive interview with Nub News, Kervin explained that she was a gymnast when she was younger and has learnt to understand a variety of sports, including football, as a sports journalist.

She said that sports journalism is "still lagging behind a little bit" in terms of having women in the role, but she believes that it is changing now and that "it feels great to be the first woman to do it".

Kervin's YouTube series An Introduction to football (for people who know absolutely nothing about the game) explains the off-side law of the game through buying a drink in a bar, and team tactics explained through a dinner party.

The series has been described as "a witty, highly shareable, and deeply empowering piece of digital video content".

Speaking about why she decided to make the series, Kervin told Nub News: "When the World Cup comes on, or when there's a new Premier League season or when there's any big sport event, all my friends always ask me, 'how does this work, what are they doing, why is he on the floor',and then I always end up having to explain the rules to them just like you might explain a recipe to friends at a dinner party.

"So, I thought, why don't I create some videos, just really basic videos explaining how the key things work to help people watching the World Cup but don't really know what's going on."

Kervin explained that she hopes to do more videos in the future explaining other sports, but decided to do football first because, as a sports journalist, she knows that it attracts more attention than other sports.

She added: "Football becomes such a huge story when there's a big tournament like this. So, I thought that was a good one to start with, but I'm thinking about doing little videos for every sport.

"For example, I may do videos on 'How does rugby work, how does cricket work, or how does golf work?'

"With football I did a proper six part-series because I thought there's so much to it and a lot of people just don't know what's going on.

"I think women and football especially is changing, but certainly with my generation, we never really came across football. We didn't play football at school but more women are starting to play it now, which is great.

"The successes of the England women's football team are just having such an incredible impact across the country.

"But I think it's only relatively recently that women have been seen on television and in the newspapers as footballers."



While Kervin hopes that her series will be useful to people during this year's Fifa World Cup, she said that, as it is on YouTube with easy access, people can watch it at any time, for example when the Premier League starts.

By being on YouTube, the series can be watched on phones, computers, and televisions.

Kervin said: "So, hopefully it encourages people to even watch one or two of them [the videos] or the whole series and feel a bit more like they've got a clearer idea of what on earth is going on out there."

The full series of An Introduction to football (for people who know absolutely nothing about the game) can be accessed via YouTube here.