The hidden history of women’s football in England
Two flawless touches are all she needs to get where she wants to be. The tip of her boot meets the underside of the ball and sends it on a magnificent arc.
A collective intake of breath evolves into a cacophony of cheers and groans. Over 40,000 split second emotions bouncing off each other.
Amidst them, a young girl watches on in awe and whispers, “That will be me one day. I will score in an FA Cup final at Wembley.”
But it hasn’t always been like this.
The 1921 ban
The earliest record of a UK female football team goes back to the late 19th century. Scottish suffragette Helen Matthews founded Ms. Graham’s XI in 1881 and they recorded their first match on 9th May 1881.
But women’s football in England really began to grow in popularity when men’s competitive football was suspended during World War I.
It was believed that organised sports would be good for morale and productivity in wartime factories, so competitive sport was encouraged.
One of the most renowned teams, Dick, Kerr Ladies, drew a crowd of 10,000 people to their first match on Christmas Day 1917 and raised £600 for wounded soldiers.
This was only the beginning for the pioneering women’s team.
By the end of 1920, 53,000 spectators showed up to watch them play at Goodison Park, with over 10,000 locked outside.
The average attendance for Everton men’s team at Goodison Park this season has been just over 38,000.
Women’s football was drawing the attention of the nation, but the Football Association (FA) had other ideas. Within less than a year, they declared the game ‘quite unsuitable for females.’
Contrary to popular belief, the FA didn’t ban the women’s game entirely. The ban in fact stopped FA affiliated men’s teams allowing women to use their facilities.
So, women could still play the game, they just had nowhere decent to do so.
This fact alludes to the FA’s primary motivation: they saw the women’s game as a threat to their male counterparts’. The women had proved a financial success, and this just couldn’t continue.
To further justify their decision, the FA claimed that the funds raised by the women’s teams were not reaching their intended charities.
The truth is, no access to reasonable facilities and stadiums meant there was no opportunity to charge entrance fees, therefore hindering the ability to bring in money.
Women had proved their capabilities were equal to men on numerous fronts during the war and yet they were disregarded – returned to their ‘right and proper place’ in society.
Unrest in the 60s
In 1967, 19-year-old Patricia Gregory watched with her father as his team, Tottenham, won the FA Cup. While fans celebrated the team’s trophy, she thought: “why don’t girls play football?”.
She had no idea that this thought would be the catalyst for the future of the women’s game.
When prompted on this, she replied:
“We weren’t visionaries. We were just annoyed that we weren’t allowed to do something.”
Unaware of the still active FA ban, Gregory wrote a letter to her local newspaper about the absence of women’s football teams. The paper published a photograph of her with a few words.
“Then girls wrote to me wanting to join my team. And of course, I didn’t have a team. So, we got the girls together.
“Then when I approached the local council, which was the London Borough of Haringey, they wouldn’t hire me a pitch and quoted the 1921 ban”, said Gregory.
This was the first time that Gregory had ever heard of the FA ban, but she was undeterred.
“I wrote again to the local paper and a men’s team said: ‘Come and use our training facilities’, but we still didn’t have a pitch.
“So, I put an advert in a soccer magazine. Men’s and boys’ teams said: ‘Come on, play us on our pitches’, so that’s what we did.”
And so, the women’s football team White Ribbon was formed.
When asked what it was like to play against men and boys at a time when sexism was rife in society, Gregory replied:
“We always got a very good reception, but there was always one player who was not going to be beaten by a woman.”
The formation of the WFA
The advertisement also attracted the attention of Arthur Hobbs, which Gregory believes to be the most important development.
Hobbs – dubbed by Gregory herself as the “father of women’s football in this country” – was already running an eight-team women’s tournament in Deal, Kent, and invited White Ribbon to play.
Through this, Gregory and her team met other women’s teams and alongside Hobbs, they created the South-East of England League.
They spent 1967 – 1969 forming leagues and the basis of The Women’s Football Association (WFA), which was originally to be called The Ladies Football Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“We were by this time in touch with the authorities – like the precursor of the Sports Council – and they said to us: ‘No, ladies play golf. Women play cricket, football and rugby’. So, we became The Women’s FA”, said Gregory.
The WFA was officially formed in November 1969, with 44 member clubs.
Gregory maintains that the FA lifted the women’s football ban in January 1970 – not in 1971 as many believe – a mere two months after the founding of the WFA.
This started the ball rolling. The Women’s FA Mitre Challenge Trophy was established in 1970 and the first Women’s FA Cup final was held in May 1971.
Although Gregory is quick to dismiss her own pioneer status, she did admit:
“I suppose [Arthur] was a visionary in a way, because he saw that we needed to be organised, to get something sorted out.”
And that they did.
Mexico, 1971
While the WFA was putting their plans into place, Harry Batt was becoming restless.
Batt and his wife, June, founded and managed a women’s team in Luton called Chiltern Valley Ladies during the late 1960s.
In the Luton News, January 1971, June Batt is quoted as saying: “I’m certain that in the future there will be full-time professional ladies’ teams, and we are hoping to be one of the first.”
Harry Batt was not your standard man of the 1960s. He was a bus driver who spoke several languages, had many contacts in Europe and was a passionate advocate for the women’s game.
“He really was a visionary and a maverick. His belief in the women’s game at that time was incredible”, said Leah Caleb, one of the girls to play for Batt.
The Federation of Independent European Female Football (FIEFF) invited Batt to take teams out to unofficial European tournaments in Italy in 1969 and 1970, which he duly accepted.
Italy had the most advanced women’s league in Europe at the time, and Batt became increasingly impatient with the pace at which the game was developing in England – particularly the absence of a national team.
Cue Mexico 1971.
Love these new shirts commemorating the unofficial women’s World Cup mascot from 1971 in Mexico—20 years before FIFA finally got its act together to create an official tournament (via @JeanMWilliams) https://t.co/WhMIRPUa7v pic.twitter.com/TYj2r8VH5q
— Grant Wahl (@GrantWahl) June 25, 2019
Batt took a team – made up of mainly Chiltern Valley players, and a few selected from other teams – out to an unofficial World Cup in 1971, which was organised by FIEFF and sponsored by the drinks company Martini & Rossi.
No one could have prepared the team for what greeted them in Mexico: thousands of fans and absolute adoration.
Leah Caleb was the youngest player to go out to Mexico with the team. She was only 13 years old.
“It was surreal from the moment we stepped off the aeroplane, to the moment we stepped back on.
“There were always fans. There were always people wanting your autograph and we went on television. There was a reporter with us the whole time. It’s like it was an out of body experience now.”
The WFA had declined the offer to field a team in the tournament and so Batt named his team The British Independents, to mark them as separate to an official England team.
However, tournament scoreboards and the Mexican media inadvertently called them England, unaware of the implications this may have.
This did not go down well with the WFA. Harry Batt was banned from the organisation and was effectively forced out of women’s football.
His son, Keith, told BBC Sport that his father was never the same again after this:
“My dad didn’t show his emotions. In my life I saw tears in his eyes a handful of times but that was one of them. They hurt him.
“And in doing that they didn’t just hurt him, they set women’s football back 30 years.”
The players also received bans, with the length dependant on their age. Some of the women quit the sport completely, including the captain of the team, Carol Wilson.
Gregory argues that the WFA was trying to be fair by holding trials across the country – putting together an inclusive and representative England team.
However, there is also the view that the team’s participation in Mexico 1971 sped up the creation of the official women’s national team.
The first England Women’s team was formed by the WFA and played their first official match against Scotland in 1972.
What is undeniable, is that Mexico 1971 was a key moment in women’s football history in the UK and it deserves to be remembered as such.
Almost half a century after playing in front of 90,000 fans at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City at an early Women's World Cup, the 1971 unofficial England team are back together.
We ❤ this story.
➡ https://t.co/8nNfzudeqq #Lionesses #ENG #FIFAWWC pic.twitter.com/GG3CRCssge
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) June 26, 2019
Sadly, the significant developments didn’t continue. The women’s game plateaued from the early 1970s until the FA officially took over in 1993. Even then, things didn’t really pick up until two decades later.
Caleb believes that had they been supported and had the advocates worked together, perhaps the sport would have grown faster.
“It took far too long – women’s football had the opportunity to have skyrocketed from ’71”, she said.
National Football Museum curator Belinda Scarlett supports this view:
“Maybe it just needed people who were a little bit braver, like Harry, to push for it, rather than people working within the structures of the FA.
The WFA were very important, but they were a ‘safe’ organisation.”
It’s clear there is still a long way to go until women achieve equality within football, but sometimes it’s important to acknowledge how far we have come.
To hear more about Mexico 1971, click to listen to a narrative podcast.
Featured image “038792:Women’s Football Newcastle upon Tyne Unknown 1938” by Newcastle Libraries is marked with CC PDM 1.0.
