Just
A Ball Game?- Interview with Women’s Football Association’s (WFA) Patricia
Gregory.
Our good friend and former Women’s Football
Association (WFA) Hon. Secretary and Hon. Life Vice- President Patricia Gregory
took some time out to speak to us about the history of the women’s game and
what things were like before Football Association’s (FA) involvement.
Often there is a misconception that until
the last 3-4 decades football has only ever been a male spectator sport, with
the females few and far between turning out to watch matches. However even as
far back as the first ever ‘War Of The Roses’ game in 1870 a significant number
of spectators cheering both Yorkshire and Lancashire sides were female.
Then,
as the popularity of the game increased, women became an integral part of
football crowds.
Well before the FA were formed in 1863 and they took over the regulation
of the modern day sport we know of today, it is documented that women played the
game in a 6-a-side format on Bath’s bowling green as far back as October 1726. Women’s
football is a popular participatory and spectator sport across the globe, but
in England, football’s country of origin, women and girls have been discouraged
from playing the game for many years.
This has not always been the
case, female football matches are on record from the late 19th century, and,
during the First World War female munitions workers and other factory workers,
and even some suffragettes famously
organised many games for the purpose of raising money for war charities. These
were extremely well attended to the extent that at one point the women’s game
looked likely to become even more popular than the men’s game.
A couple of years back JBG? founder
Lindsay England and BBC’s Shelley Alexander convinced Patricia to archive the
documents and memorabilia that Patricia had hold of and others belonging to
colleagues for safe keeping and future reference, Thankfully these items are
now with the British Library and the hard work and dedication of these pioneers
of the women’s game can now be examined in those archives.
Looking
ahead to this year’s FIFA Women’s world Cup in France Patricia Gregory says, “It’s over 50 years on since I started a women’s football team, and I am amazed
at the progress of this modern form of the sport which we created in the
mid-1960s.”
Gregory grew up a Tottenham Hotspur
supporter. Watching Spurs’ cup victory
celebrations alongside her dad in the mid 1960s, Patricia began to wonder why it was that women didn't play
football, and then she decided to write a letter, which was subsequently published
in her local newspaper, asking this very question.
In reply, Patricia, who
didn't even play at that time, was inundated with a number of replies and
letters back from young girls/women asking if they could join her team. There
was no team available to play for but the idea of starting one sounded
appealing and a team was formed by Gregory and named White Ribbon.
There
was a stumbling block first off as the team found that because of the Football Association
(FA) ban which had been imposed in 1921, they were therefore partaking in
unaffiliated football matches and they were unable to hire pitches in parks or
from football clubs, or use qualified FA registered referees. The ban had been
stringently applied for 50 years, and the prohibition was only lifted in December
1969.This made it almost impossible to
locate other girls teams so initially the White Ribbon team played young men’s
teams, on their pitches, as this was the only way any females could actively
enjoy the sport.
The
1966 England World Cup win had driven public enthusiasm for all forms of the
game. Using this propulsion, a group of eager and enthusiastic female
footballers along with the help of a number of supportive men decided to form a
women’s game association.
Reminiscing those early years
Gregory says, “Eventually the handful of women’s teams began to organise
leagues and by 1969 the Women’s F.A. came into being and the first ever meeting
took place. It initially started out as the Ladies Football Association of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland. No less than 51 affiliated clubs signed up, 38 were represented at the
inaugural meeting under
the guidance of Arthur Hobbs the first Hon. Secretary. As I could type I was
Hon. Asst. Secretary.”
“In the 25 years of its existence
the WFA really established the sport in England, we created the National Cup
competition (still existing today). We also formed the first official England
team, oversaw a network of nationwide leagues, fought for the registration of
women referees and coaches and much, much more.”
“The FA agreed in 1969 that we could
use referees and also their affiliated grounds. However, The FA were not the
only ones responsible for the alienation of the women’s game at that time. The
Football League (FL, now EFL) didn't lift their objections to our using their
grounds until we played an International match against The Netherlands in
November 1973 (a game played at Reading FC).”
Gregory continued: "The
Union Of European Association Football (UEFA) voted in late 1971 that their
member associations should take control of women's football but they left the
associations to choose how they would control this."
“Following on from the UEFA
acceptance, on Leap Year Day 1972 The FA recognised the Women’s Football
Association (WFA) as the sole governing body of women's football in England at
the present time. While most of Europe integrated women's football into their
associations, the FA simply recognised the WFA as the sole governing body.”
“The FA formed a Joint Consultative
Committee along with the Women’s Football Association in 1972 and it met in
July of that year for the first time. The very same year the Scots formed the Scottish
Women’s Football Association (SWFA).”
“Arthur Hobbs, stood down at the AGM
in June 1972. He was made an Hon. Life Member of the WFA Council. Sadly
Arthur died in 1975 so never lived to see how much the game progressed to what
we know it is today with a fully professional elite league and players not only
able to earn some sort of a wage, but also supported with a whole team of
backroom staff.”
“Another significant male ally for the
women’s game was David Hunt. He started off as Treasurer of the WFA from the
early 70's and became Chairman in 1977. He was in that position for several
years. He hailed from Buckinghamshire and he became an Hon. Life Vice-President
of the WFA when he stepped down from the Chair. He was with me on the South East
of England League and in 1969 we took a league rep side to the old
Czechoslovakia when the Russians were still in Prague having earlier invaded
the country.”
Playing and setting up teams
was certainly not easy for the WFA in the early years. Little money was
available despite an increase in sponsorship, and the association relied on the
strong commitment of its many volunteers, advocates and grubstakers’.
Recalling more on that first decade
of existence Gregory says, “The WFA office opened at the end of 1980, the
office was initially based in central London but was then relocated to
Manchester in1990.
“In 1984 we saw a new structure for
the WFA with affiliation to The FA on the same basis as a County. Our first
Council representative was the then Chairman, Tim Stearn.”
“In 1992 the WFA had 373 clubs
competing, but that topped 400 very quickly. In that same 92/93 season 151
clubs entered the WFA Cup The WFA then handed the organisation of the game over
to The FA in 1993.”
“The first women's committee was formed
and a women's football coordinator was established at this time. It was called the
Women's Football Alliance, the first meeting took place on 18th July 1993.
“We knew the time was right to hand
it over as we could not afford to keep it going and didn't have the possibility
of raising the sort of money which it needed to take the game to the next level
in all respects handing over in excess of 400 clubs to The FA in 1993 was the
natural progression as we knew that we could not fund the sport in the way it
needed in order to flourish.”
Gregory added: “With no real
financial backing it was always a struggle for the WFA, come 1993, the right
thing to do was to allow The FA to take over responsibility.
"We weren't pushing for
them to take us over before that because we knew that there wasn't the appetite
there - they hadn't embraced the game in the way that, say, the Germans had. But
in 1993 we knew we couldn't continue anymore. We'd done all the spadework and
they bailed us out."
But Gregory did feel that the
FA's "20 years of women's football" celebrations in 2013 ignored
those who dedicated their lives to women's football in previous decades.
She wrote a letter to the then
outgoing FA chairman David Bernstein, asking him to acknowledge the longer
history of the game.
"It's a bit sad and
disappointing that what the WFA did for so many years has just disappeared into
the ether," she said. "Things evolve and it was probably the right time
to stop being involved, but what I find hard to accept is that we are
whitewashed out."
“In the 25 years of its existence
the WFA really established the sport in England, we created the National Cup
competition (still existing today), formed the first official England team,
oversaw a network of nationwide leagues, fought for the registration of women
referees and coaches and much, much more.”
“It ‘s a long way women’s football
has come since those early pioneers first kicked a football in 1895!” says
Gregory.
We chatted more with Patricia and
between us followed up leads and research but often this has only resulted in
more questions than answers with very little documentation on female football
ever being taken let alone archived.
Here
are a few more stats and notes of early pioneering days of the women’s game:
It’s possible that women were
playing the game on a regular basis as early as the 1830’s, though the game would have only been
5. 6 and 7-a-side matches.
A picture has been found which depicts
a female game in 1869 and if established as being correctly dated this could
well be one of the first pictures of women playing football.
For some time a game played in an 1895
match at Crouch End, North London was considered to be the earliest official
women’s match in the world which was billed as North v South but then
information surfaced of an earlier set of fixtures claiming similar. Those
being Scotland v England matches in 1881 were reported in the Glasgow Herald.
There were also games in Blackburn, Liverpool and Manchester going under the
title England v Scotland but there is reasonable doubt that they were as billed
an actual international. Early
newspaper reports were not particularly generous on these games, a Manchester Guardian reporter
suggesting the following, “When the novelty has worn off, I do not think
women’s football will attract the crowds”.
A Sketch article of 6th Feb 1895
refers to the ‘British Ladies FC match’ North v South, which seems to be the
North of England reference. Their team had a "custodian", a lady from
Glasgow and the result was 7-1 to the
North. The match lasted 60 minutes and had a crowd of 10,000. The article
finishes "it must be clear to everybody that girls are totally unfitted
for the rough work of the football field".
Information is also unclear as to the
names of some of the players for instance was Nettie J. Honeyball a pseudonym as she wasn't listed on the
1891 census, and was her real name Nellie Hudson as some reports say?
Here's a puzzle. The name Nellie Honeyball in London appears on the 1911,
1901, 1891 and 1881 censuses. Family research isn’t straight forward and often the
problem is names change. She seems the most likely candidate for Nettie. But, there
is also a Harriet Honeyball on the 1901 census living in Camberwell, London but
born in Coggleshall, Essex. Take your pick… was she Nettie, Harriet or Nellie?
The first official international
fixture (and quite possibly the first ever women’s
international in the world) between Scotland v England was played at Greenock
on 18th November 1972. Final
score being Scotland 2 England 3. First blood going the way of the
England side. The return match result was England 8 Scotland 0, a game played
in June 1973 at Nuneaton FC.
The North West’s famous Dick, Kerr’s
Ladies travelled across the channel to play a select French side in 1921 on a
small tour across the country with games taking place in Paris, Roubaix, Le
Havre and Rouen. They had formed a few years
earlier after the suspension of the Football League at the end of the 1914-15
season. A number of
women working in factories began to play informal games of football during
their lunch breaks. At Dick, Kerr & Co, a Preston-based locomotive and
tramcar manufacturer, the female workers showed a particular aptitude for the
game. Watching from a window above the yard where they played an office worker
Alfred Frankland spotted their talent and set about forming a team. The team
was led on the pitch by founding player Grace Sibbert and under Frankland’s
management, they soon drew significant crowds to see their games. They beat
rival factory Arundel Coulthard 4–0 on Christmas Day 1917, with 10,000 watching
at Preston North End’s Deepdale stadium.
Even after the FA ban of 1921 a
number of teams kept playing for some years. In the 1950’s Manchester
Corinthians was the most well known Manchester club. Fodens were around in the
50's too although they came from nearby Crewe.
Sheila Parker, who was the first
England women’s captain (England
1972-1984) said,“ When the FA ban was finally lifted I was
about 24 years old. I was asked to captain England in the first official
Women’s FA match, against Scotland in 1972, which we won 3-2. A little known fact also accompanies the back story of this
fixture in the following context in that the first Scotland v England men's match
was also played in Glasgow exactly 100 years before - a pure coincidence!”
Looking at the players
internationally (i.e. officially playing for England) during the seventies,
eighties and early nineties and finding out ages is also still unclear, which makes
records of youngest ever player and/or goal scorer hard to pinpoint. We have
found documentation of a Linda J. Curl being born in Norwich in the first
quarter of 1962 but can't be absolutely sure she is the England player. Curl
was in the England squad from mid-1976. If the information is correct you could
say Linda was certainly one of the youngest England players at that time if not
thee youngest.
Likewise Jeannie Allott also played
for England. Again, looking up her birth you can find a Jeannie C. Allott being
born in Crewe in the first quarter of 1957. Allott was in the first England
squad in 1972 and is listed as 16 years. If it's the right one she would have
been under 16 in November 1972 when she scored England's third goal, possibly
being one of the youngest scorers of the Lionesses team.
Other notable questions can be asked
about female referees during these mid to late 20th century years. Pat
Dunn, the first Chairman of the WFA, who hailed from Dorset was also one of the
first ever female referees, Pat died in 1999. Joan Briggs is another name which
crops up a few times was a female referee, but again little more is known about
her involvement.
Those WFA papers which are
now in the good hands of the British Library archive contain the minutes of the
WFA’s Council, Finance & General Purposes Committee; Officers meetings and
AGMs; and also the deliberations of the WFA/FA Joint Consultative Committee
which eventually oversaw the winding up of the Association and the handing over
to the FA of the organisation of the women’s game. There are newsletters
& journals spanning 1972-1992, many of which the Library does not hold in
its general collection (e.g., Women’s
Football Information Sheet; Women’s
Football; WFA
News; Sunday
Kicks) and a number of other fascinating items.
The history of the Women’s FA can be
viewed on the website : https://wfahistory.wordpress.com/
