“And then I think if we then look at the economy and how companies and businesses are going to tighten up on their budgets, people are going to lose their jobs – and then there might not necessarily be a lot of commercial sponsorship spend and that is going to impact, in the end, on the female game.”

What’s the latest situation?

In football, the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship seasons were ended formally in May, having been halted by the pandemic in March, but it is hoped that £1m of investment from the Premier League will fund coronavirus tests for players and enable the 2020-21 campaign to start.

There is no date set for the resumption of elite-level women’s cricket, but the England and Wales Cricket Board has stated its “unwavering” commitment to the women’s game and said it still hopes to launch a new elite domestic competition this summer.

However, with men’s Test cricket starting next week and the men’s county cricket season starting on 1 August, Agbeze said it appeared that “women’s sport is almost a second thought”.

The Netball SuperLeague was cancelled in May after just three full rounds of fixtures.

Agbeze said she thinks “more needs to be done to get netball back” but added that a pre-season tournament is being planned for September or October.

‘A short-term blip’

Huddleston has written to the Football Association, Rugby Football Union, Rugby Football League, Lawn Tennis Association and the ECB to highlight the importance of promoting women and girls sport and to check what action they are taking to achieve this.

He will follow this up in a meeting with them later this month.

He told BBC Sport: “It is a priority of mine to bang the drum for women’s sport at every opportunity, pushing for greater participation, employment, commercial opportunities and visibility in the media.

“As we work closely with the sports sector to help them plan for the future, we’re alive to the pressures that women’s sports are facing, and are fully committed to helping them recover so we don’t lose any of the great momentum that has built up.”

UK Sport’s Munday added: “For a long time, we have had this nonsense-narrative that people don’t want to watch women’s sport, yet what we have seen over the past few years is people do want to watch it.”

Munday pointed to the high viewing figures for the 2016 Olympic women’s hockey final in Rio de Janeiro, where Great Britain beat the Netherlands on penalties to win gold.

She said: “Almost 10 million watched the Rio hockey final, a humungous amount of people watched the women’s football World Cup and Netball World Cup.

“Women’s sport, I think, is absolutely set to become the greatest growth story of sport. We’ve got sport governing bodies who have the capability of bringing women’s sport back quickly.”