{"id":17323,"date":"2022-07-07T12:39:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T10:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com\/?p=11709"},"modified":"2022-07-07T13:13:16","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T11:13:16","slug":"a-game-of-two-halves-the-history-of-womens-football","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/rss_feed\/a-game-of-two-halves-the-history-of-womens-football\/","title":{"rendered":"A game of two halves: the history of women\u2019s football"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Sarah Williams\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 07 July 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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\u201cThe members of the club do not play in fashion\u2019s dress, but in knickers and blouses. They actually allow the calves of their legs to be seen, and wear caps and football boots! Terrible! Is it not? \u2018Quite too shocking!\u2019 as an old society dame remarked to me with a shudder, adding squeakily, \u2018And I certainly should never allow dear Mynie to so demean herself!\u2019\u2026 I wondered which looked most decent, my lithe, agile football teams, in their dark blue knickers and cardinal and pale blue blouses, [or] this old slave of fashion and her unnaturally attired charge, with their naked shoulders and arms, pinched in waists, high-heeled shoes, and grotesque balloon-like shoulders hunched and blown out for all the world like huge tumours?\u201d<\/p>\n

So wrote Lady Florence Dixie in her essay about football for women, published in the Pall Mall Gazette<\/em> on 8 February 1895. This well-known campaigner for women\u2019s rights had just become the president of the newly formed British Ladies\u2019 Football Club. Though her words create the impression that women\u2019s football was a revolutionary sport for avant-garde ladies, newspaper reports tell a different story.<\/p>\n

Nearly 170 years earlier, in 1726, a mention of ladies playing football appeared in the Ipswich Journal<\/em>: \u201cA new and extraordinary Entertainment was set on Foot for the Divertion of our polite Gentry\u2026 a Match at Foot-Ball, play\u2019d by six young Women of a Side, at the Bowling Green.\u201d And \u201cpolite Gentry\u201d were not the only ones playing it \u2013 so were women of the lower classes. From at least the late 18th century, a yearly football match was played on Shrove Tuesday between married and unmarried fisherwomen in the Scottish town of Musselburgh.<\/p>\n

However, football of the early years had a very different image. Rules varied, team numbers could be unlimited, handballs weren\u2019t officially outlawed and even the penalty \u2013 or the \u2018kick of death\u2019, as it was first known \u2013 hadn\u2019t been invented. It was only in 1863 that formal Laws of the Game were adopted by the newly formed Football Association (FA). Some two decades later, organised women\u2019s football emerged.<\/p>\n

The first recorded women\u2019s football match<\/h2>\n
The first recorded women\u2019s match took place in 1881 in Edinburgh, at the home of the Scottish club Hibernian. Theatre entrepreneur Alec Gordon and theatre magnate Charles Scholes, together with Scholes\u2019 wife Nancy and theatre manager George Frederick Charles, recruited teams representing England and Scotland. These \u2018Lady Players\u2019 were mainly dancers or performers of another ilk: Lizzie Gilbert\u2019s Juvenile Ballet Company provided the English side, Glasgow\u2019s Royal Princess\u2019s Theatre house company the Scottish. The Lady Players\u2019 first match kicked off at 3pm on 7 May 1881; Scots player Lily St Clare became the first recorded goalscorer in the history of women\u2019s football, followed by Louise Cole and Maud Rimeford, giving Scotland a 3\u20130 victory.<\/p>\n
The newspapers<\/a> were far from pleasant about the tour that followed. Women\u2019s sport had previously been subjected to scorn and ridicule, because of the clothing worn and concerns over women\u2019s reproductive health. Satirical magazine Punch joked in 1873 that \u201cIrrepressible woman is again in the field. \u2018Ladies\u2019 Cricket\u2019 is advertised, to be followed\u2026 by Ladies\u2019 Fives, Ladies\u2019 Football, Ladies\u2019 Golf\u2026 It is all over with men. They had better make up their minds to rest contented with croquet, and afternoon tea, and sewing machines\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately a riot that broke out at the Lady Players\u2019 second match in 1881 confirmed the press in their opinion. \u201cDisgraceful Scenes At Women\u2019s Football Match\u201d declared the Glasgow Evening Times. Among the spectators, it was said, \u201cwere certainly not many of the class of people who usually patronise the game\u201d. What\u2019s more, \u201cthe most shocking imprecations and vulgarities [were] audible\u201d; no goals had been scored by the 55th minute, so the match \u201ccould hardly be of interest\u201d.<\/p>\n
Full of rude ruffians with no captivating play and followed by an almighty riot, in which police utilised their batons after a pitch invasion, the match demonstrated that football was no place for a woman.<\/p>\n
Yet, despite the media\u2019s opinion, the Lady Players completed their tour, and their next match drew a 4,000-strong crowd. Over the following 15 years, other amateur women\u2019s clubs would appear on the scene \u2013 one of which used the newspapers to its advantage.<\/p>\n
The arrival of the British Ladies\u2019 Football Club<\/h2>\n
The British Ladies\u2019 Football Club was formed in 1895 by Nettie Honeyball, thought to be the pseudonym of Mary Hutson. Placing advertisements in various newspapers, she sought female players for the club and publicised its first match. A number of women answered the call, many from poorer, theatrical backgrounds \u2013 the reason Lady Florence Dixie soon left her post as president. Dividing into \u2018North\u2019 and \u2018South\u2019, British Ladies\u2019 FC drew a crowd of 10,000 to their debut match at Crouch End on 23 March 1895.<\/p>\n
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