The Women’s Football Team Banned For Being Too Successful

During the First World War, an amateur women’s football team became international sensations, attracting fans in their tens of thousands. It should have been the dawn of the women’s game. But instead, they faced exile.

Illustrated by Elena Hayward

It’s 1917, war rages across Europe. And in one converted munitions factory in Preston, morale is low.

As is so often the case, a football is presented to raise spirits. Soon, a full-blooded men versus women kick-about is in motion. By the time lunch is over, the women have claimed victory. Humbled, the men propose a conciliatory rematch next lunch; and the next; and the next.

A few months later, staring out his office window, the site administrator caught a glimpse of these uniformed women running rings around their male counterparts and a plan formulated.

A few phone calls later and he had hired out Preston North End’s Deepdale Stadium for a Boxing Day charity match. Ten thousand spectators crammed into the iconic stadium to watch the newly formed ‘Dick, Kerr Ladies’ (named after the factory) run out 4–0 winners in their first-ever game, raising £488,07 (£41,730.59 in today’s money) for a local hospital.

Over the next two years, the team played another 28 games, balancing their factory work with their flourishing footballing fame. Soon these games were garnering nationwide attention. In April 1918, the Dick Kerr Ladies drew 0–0 with Newcastle Girls on the hallowed turf of St James Park, one of England’s most famous football grounds, in front of over 25,000 supporters.

By booking stadiums traditionally reserved for men, the team were making a statement that women’s football was an equal product to the male game. The FA, the governing body for football in the UK, looked on cautiously.

Soon the team-building-exercise turned footballing juggernaut were going international. In December 1920, they embarked on their most ambitious tour yet: three fixtures against the French national team, the first-ever women’s association football games. The women from Preston won all three, with an aggregate score of 10:0.

On the team sheet was a young Lily Parr, a tricky left-winger who, at 14, was already 6ft. In her first season, she scored 43 goals and, according to legend, managed to break a goalkeeper’s arms with one of her famously powerful strikes. Lily would go on to score 986 goals in her career (at the time of writing, Messi is on 689).

On boxing day 1920, 53,000 spectators packed into Goodison Park — home of Everton Football Club — to see them beat St Helens, with thousands of fans reportedly turned away at the turnstiles. This attendance set a worldwide record for women’s football which would take 99 years to beat.

In three years, the Dick Kerr Ladies had gone from a factory yard kickabout to the world’s most successful women’s team, raising huge funds for charity along the way.

The FA responded in the only way they knew how; misogynistic rage. Women had only just gained the vote, and now they appeared to be on the verge of usurping men at their favourite pastime.

In 1921 the FA banned its members from hosting women’s football in their grounds- literally killing the game overnight. To justify the decision, they cited a selection of nonsense pseudoscience claiming that football was “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”.

The authority principally responsible for women’s football prefered to ban the sport, rather than recognise it’s legitimacy. The ban lasted for 50 years, restricting two generations of women from participating competitively in their country’s national sport.

The Dick Kerr Ladies continued in exile. After the UK ban, they embarked on a tour of Canada and the United States. However, when they arrived in Canada they were met with another ban, this time from playing in Canadian grounds.

Undeterred they continued to America, where they played a series of games against the USA’s top men’s teams. Despite their supposed fatal femininity, the Dick Kerr Ladies acquitted themselves well, winning three games, drawing three, and losing three.

Under the title of Preston Ladies F.C, they continued through the 30s flouting the FA’s ruling by touring internationally or playing at grounds too small or obscure to be covered by the ban. Their manager was quoted as stating “The team will continue to play…even if we have to play on ploughed fields.”

And so they did, the world’s most successful women’s football team, playing out their careers, not in packed stadiums, but banished to school fields, local parks, and village pitches.