When Football Banned Women

ENG 45mnts Doc

When.Football.Banned.Women.ENG.twb22.mp4

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A 12-year-old girl sat on a bus, flanked by her parents, en route from Prescot to Manchester for a football match. She wasn’t going to watch; she was going to play. Unremarkable? Today, certainly. But it was the 1950s, and girls and women were under strict edicts not to play – from none other than the FA. That 12-year-old girl was Sylvia Gore. She had always loved football, and as a child would kick a ball around with her father and uncle, learning the techniques like millions of other children the world over. “The local football team, Prescot Cables, used to look for me at half-time so I could come on and kick a ball in the goal – they accepted it,” Gore said in May 2016. “A lot of men up and down the country didn’t.” The FA’s ban on women’s football began in 1921 – a kneejerk reaction to its popularity. The world-famous Dick, Kerr’s Ladies – plus a handful of other outfits – had helped to fill the gap left by the Football League’s hiatus during the First World War, and attracted huge attendances to their games as they raised money for charity.

Up to this point, women’s football had been running almost parallel to the men’s game. A trailblazing player using the pseudonym Nettie Honeyball had formed the British Ladies’ Football Club at the end of the 19th century, and her team toured the country to play exhibition games. Although spectators may have originally turned up to delight in the undignified spectacle, reports from the time suggest they found themselves enthralled by the quality of play. These games were intermittent, though, and didn’t detract or distract from the important business of men’s football. Dick, Kerr’s Ladies and their contemporaries were the real threat. The FA lost patience with the women after Dick, Kerr’s and St Helens brought 53,000 fans through the Goodison Park turnstiles on Boxing Day 1920, believed at the time to be the largest gate at any football match in England since records began.

One year later, English football’s governing body passed a resolution declaring the sport “quite unsuitable for females” and informing men’s clubs that they should refuse to let women play at their grounds. The achievements of Dick, Kerr’s Ladies were pushed into the shadows by a footballing establishment that was embarrassed by women’s success....