Tim Tate is an award-winning documentary film maker and an author. He has produced and directed films for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Al Jazeera International, and the Discovery Channel. His work has won awards from Amnesty International, the Royal Television Society, UNESCO, The New York Festivals, the Association for International Broadcasting, and the US Cable Academy. He is the author of eight previous nonfiction books, including Slave Girl. & a passionate rugby spectator and coach, uncovering the secret history of women’s football has forced him to reevaluate a sport he always believed to played with the wrong-shaped ball.

Girls with Balls

The Secret History of Women’s Football

By Tim Tate

John Blake Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Tim Tate
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78219-429-3
CHAPTER 1

Boxing Day, 1920, Goodison Park, Liverpool

Everton football ground is filled beyond capacity. Fifty-three thousand men, women and children pack its stands and draughty terraces. A further 14,000 would-be spectators are locked out of the ground and line the nearby streets. The 22 players need a police escort to get into the changing rooms. Pathé News cameras patrol the touchline. These extraordinary crowds – the biggest Liverpool has ever seen – have come to watch two local rival teams play a match for charity. But this is no normal derby match, much less a standard charity fixture. Eleven of the players are international celebrities: their team is the biggest draw in British, and world, football.

Yet they are all full-time factory workers, amateurs in an increasingly professional sport, and they are all women: the Dick, Kerr’s Ladies of the Dick, Kerr & Co Ltd munitions works in Preston. (The company was founded by a Mr William Dick and a Mr John Kerr, which explains the comma in the name). The male football establishment is terrified by them. And so it resolved to abolish women’s football … forever.

On Monday, 9 May 1881, the Glasgow Herald, Scotland’s second most popular daily newspaper, carried the following report:

LADIES INTERNATIONAL MATCH SCOTLAND V ENGLAND

A rather novel football match took place at Easter Road, Edinburgh, on Saturday between teams of lady players representing England and Scotland – the former hailing from London, and the latter, it is said, from Glasgow.

A considerable amount of curiosity was evinced in the event, and upwards of a thousand persons witnessed it. The young ladies’ ages appeared to range from eighteen to four-and-twenty, and they were very smartly dressed. The Scotch [sic] team wore blue jerseys, white knickerbockers, red stockings, a red belt, high-heeled boots and blue and white cowl; while their English sisters were dressed in blue and white jerseys, blue stockings and belt, high-heeled boots and red and white cowl.

The game, judged from a player’s point of view, was a failure, but some of the individual members of the teams showed that they had a fair idea of the game. During the first half the Scotch [sic] team, playing against the wind, scored a goal and in the second half they added another two, making a total of three goals against their opponents’ nothing. Misses St Clair and Cole scored the first two, and the third was due to Misses Stevenson and Wright.

There were many aspects to this ‘rather novel’ match that are revealing, as well some which presage the hostility to come. The first, and the most evident, was the instinctive newspaper response to view the game as little more than a curio – an entertainment somewhere between a fashion parade and a contemporary (if mild) Victorian freak show. But beneath that admittedly patronising view was a remarkable spirit of tolerance. The Glasgow Herald was by no means a liberal newspaper, its politics being somewhere in the middle of traditional Tory values. Yet there is no outrage expressed amid the typically arch prose; there are no condemnations, much less demands for a ban on the spectacle.

The second revealing aspect emerges from a reading of the team sheet. The Herald helpfully printed details of every player in the team, together with their positions. In addition to the necessity of a goalkeeper, both sides fielded two backs, two halfback and six forwards. This 6-2-2-1 formation tells us something about football itself in the late 19th century. Sides were heavily weighted in favour of a phalanx of attacking players – a formation which will become important as the story of women’s football unfolds in the coming chapters. But that team sheet has something else to tell us. The few official histories of the women’s game – as well as several unofficial ones – all record that the organiser of the fixture was a Scottish ‘suffragist’ named Helen Matthews. All modern accounts suggest she not only set up the first Scottish women’s team but was goalkeeper in all its early fixtures – including that first match at Hibernian FC’s ground in Easter Road, Edinburgh. Yet nowhere is the name Helen Matthews on any team sheet. The reason for this is simple: despite the apparently benign response of the press, it wasn’t safe for women to play football under their own names. Many of those listed on that team sheet appear to be pseudonyms – noms de football, adopted to protect the players’ true identities.

It seems Helen Matthews took this subterfuge one step further. When she established the team she called it ‘Mrs Graham’s 11’ and claimed to be the pseudonymous Mrs Graham. Yet if she did, as history suggests, play in its fixtures she must have assumed a double-alias. There are no Mrs Grahams anywhere in the side’s records. It would appear to have been an act of extreme caution – paranoia almost. And yet the wisdom of hiding behind assumed names would very quickly become all too clear.

A week after its debut in Edinburgh, Mrs Graham’s XI took to the field for a return match against England. This time the game was staged in Glasgow and team sheets show that many of the players had switched sides, somewhat undermining the claim for this to be a true international. But more worryingly, within the span of just seven days, public opinion appears to have turned against the women footballers.

On the morning of Friday, 20 May 1881, provincial newspapers across Britain carried reports of the match. (In those days provincial papers carried both national and international news, and unlike today’s almost instant reporting, much of the news was several days old by the time it was published.) Under the headline ‘Ladies’ “International” Football Match’, the Nottinghamshire Guardian informed its readers:

What will probably be the first and last exhibition of a female football match in Glasgow took place on Monday evening at Shawfield Grounds. Upwards of 5,000 spectators were present, and the absence of the fair sex was especially notable. The teams were supposed to be representatives of England and Scotland, and as the Scotch [sic] team had won the recent match in Edinburgh, some excitement was thereby caused as to the result of the encounter.

The meagre training of the teams did not augur much for proficiency of play, and if the display of football tactics was of a sorry description, it was only what might have been expected, and not much worse than some of the efforts of our noted football clubs. The costume was suitable and, at a distance the players could scarcely have been distinguished from those in ordinary football matches.

The game was continued without interruption till ends were changed, but the chaff of the spectators was anything but complimentary. Cries of ‘Go it, Fanny!’ and ‘Well done, Nelly!’ resounded from all parts of the field, but the players went on the even tenour [sic] of their way, regardless of interruptions.

Had the crowd’s reaction been no more than this faintly bawdy banter, the story of women’s football – and British football itself – might have been very different. But in an unsettling precursor of today’s soccer hooliganism, in the 55th minute of the match ribaldry turned to violence.

At last a few roughs broke into the enclosure, and as these were followed by hundreds soon after, the players were roughly jostled, and had prematurely to take refuge in the omnibus which had conveyed them to the ground. Their troubles were not, however, yet ended, for the crowd tore up the stakes and threw them at the departing vehicle, and

but for the presence of the police, some bodily injury to the females might have occurred. The team of four grey horses [pulling the omnibus] was driven rapidly from the ground amid the jeers of the crowd, and the players escaped with, let us hope, nothing worse than a serious fright.

Other provincial newspapers reported that the police action which saved the players involved a full baton charge by numerous constables. But they also reflected a feeling that by simply playing football, the women were somehow debasing the game. The popular publication Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Times attacked ‘the girls’ utmost ignorance of the game’. It also directed its ire at the male officials – called umpires, rather than referees – whose whistles enforced rules. (It was common practice in nineteenth-century football for there to be more than one official in notional charge of a match.)

They, the paper stated baldly, were ‘even more ignorant of the simple rudiments of the Association rules … there was never even such a thing as a corner-flag kick allowed, although the leather was repeatedly sent behind the goal line by the defending side’. As we shall shortly see, this sniffy verdict reflected not just contempt for the concept of women’s soccer but an internecine war that, in 1881, was being fought for the very soul of football – a war being fought by powerful vested interests. Nonetheless, the views of the man in the street, at least insofar as they were reflected by their newspapers, were hardening, as this comment in the Leeds Mercury illustrates: ‘Ladies’ football has had an exceedingly short life, and not a very merry one. Public feeling has demonstrated against the unseemly exhibition in such a manner that the authorities are now frowning down the innovation.’

It was a blow to women’s football and a setback for the nascent suffragist movement, although ironically, the day after the riot at the Glasgow match, Scottish women were given their first taste of political equality when the Queen signed into law the Woman’s Franchise (Scotland) Bill, allowing rate-paying women to vote in local government elections. (English women had enjoyed this very limited right to vote for local councillors for almost two decades.)

A third match between the Scottish and English teams had been scheduled for 17 May at Kilmarnock Portland FC, but after the previous night’s riots the club refused to allow the use of its pitch. If Scotland was now plainly off-limits, Helen Matthews decided to try her luck on the other side of the border. On Saturday, 21 May, five days after the Glasgow riot, Mrs Graham’s XI and the self-proclaimed English team walked out on to the turf at Hole-i’th-wall, the home of Blackburn Olympic FC in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley. The local Blackburn Standard newspaper was in attendance and reported:

FEMALES IN THE FOOTBALL FIELD May 28, 1881

Woman’s mission, according to some authorities, is to compete with man in every department of life, and some enterprising person has organised a team of ‘lady’ football players, who are understood to hail from Glasgow.

On Saturday afternoon these ‘ladies’ played a match on the ground of the Blackburn Olympic Club, at Hole-‘the-wall, where some 4,000 people assembled to witness their exploits.

The ladies did not play well as a team, not, perhaps, having been trained to run in harness. There were no halfbacks or any halves whatever about the game, each lady being in full possession of her position and playing her own game whenever she got a chance without much regard to the result.

Neither side scored up to the call of half-time but subsequently each side made a goal, though neither was allowed to count. Shortly before the time of closing there was an excited melee in front of the goal of the Scotch [sic] – it should be stated that the game was an international one – and a goal was neatly reckoned by the English team, who were declared the victors. Both sides soon afterwards scampered from the field.

Other than the distinctly sardonic references to ‘ladies’ – the speech-marks hinting at the question of whether suitably respectable women would put themselves on show in front of thousands of spectators – and the dismissive review of the tactical nous, the paper’s verdict contained none of the bile and approbation which had followed the Glasgow match.

Encouraged, Helen Matthews scheduled a second game for the following Saturday, this time at Fairfield Athletic Grounds in Liverpool. But something appears to have happened during the intervening week. A few hundred spectators duly turned up: but there was no sign of the teams. Nor would there be for a full month afterwards. Then, on 20 June 1881, a notice appeared in the pages of the Manchester Guardian.

LADIES FOOTBALL MATCH

The Lady Players who were advertised to play during Whitweekwill positively PLAY at Cheetham Football Ground, Totlow Fold, Great Cheetham Street, on MONDAY (today), TUESDAY, and WEDNESDAY, [June] 20, 21, 22. Admission 1s ad 2s. Kickof [sic] 7.30pm.

The entrance fee was surprisingly expensive. Spectators at top-flight men’s football matches paid a fraction of the 1 shilling (let alone 2 shillings) being charged at the Cheetham gate, reinforcing the impression that what was being staged was a spectacle rather than sport. No record exists of the first or third scheduled matches at Cheetham Football Ground, but on Monday, 20 June, the Manchester Guardian carried the following report. It was not good news.

DISORDERLY SCENE AT A WOMEN’S FOOTBALL MATCH

The score or so of young women who do not hesitate to gratify vulgar curiosity by taking part in what is termed a ‘ladies’ football match appeared last evening for the second time this week on the ground of the Cheetham Football Club, Tetlow Fold, Great Cheetham Street. The Club, however, had nothing to do with the affair.

The public had been invited by placard to witness a match between ‘eleven of England and eleven of Scotland’, the kick off to take place at half past seven pm. The players, attired in a costume which is neither graceful nor very becoming, were driven to the ground in a wagonette, and, as was to be expected, were followed by a crowd composed of youths eager to avail themselves of the opportunity for a little boisterous amusement.

Play – if kicking the ball about the field can be so described – was commenced pretty punctually. Very few persons paid for admission to the grounds, but a great multitude assembled in the road and struggled for sight of what was going on within the enclosure, whilst an equally large number gathered on the higher ground on the other side of the field for a similar purpose.

A number of police constables were present to maintain order and prevent anyone entering without paying, and for about an hour whilst this so-called match was being played they succeeded. There were frequent attempts, however, to elude the constables.

At length a great rush was made by those occupying the higher land, and the football ground was speedily taken possession of by the mob.

Apprehending a repetition of the rough treatment they have met with in other parts of the country the women no sooner heard the clamour which accompanied the rush than they also took to their heels and ran to where the wagonette was standing. This they reached before the crowd could overtake them, and amid the jeers of the multitude and much disorder they were immediately driven away.

This was a second riot, or at least near-riot, at a women’s football match in a matter of just four weeks. Worse, it happened in a city which was already building a reputation for disorder, violence and crime. Manchester, the heart of ‘King Cotton’ (the backbone of the northern industrial revolution) was rapidly expanding. At the start of the 19th century its population was 322,000. Fifty years later it had topped one million and by 1881 was well on course to double that figure. The vast majority of this explosion of population comprised working class men, women and children. They were drawn into the sprawling slums of the city by work, generally ill-paid and frequently dangerous, in the cotton mills.

Crime and, to the Victorian mind most importantly, disorder were booming. The Lancashire Cotton Famine – a slump in the textile industry caused by disruption to cotton imports from America during its civil war in the 1860s – had led to a lingering economic depression across the north-west. The fear of riots by the urban working class was never far from middle class minds, to the point where the dwellers in the slums they had created were termed ‘dangerous classes’, and was exacerbated by the spectre of unemployment and destitution. To some extent this fear was diffuse: a messy mix of concern with political disorder and the essentially Victorian obsession with maintaining what its leaders saw as the correct habits of restraint and obedience by the lower orders to their betters.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Girls with Balls by Tim Tate. Copyright © 2013 Tim Tate. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
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