Amazing Footage of the First International Women's Match

Wow!

Btw, I did some research. I think this match actually took place in November 18, 1972 (according to the English FA's website; the goals were from Sylvia Gore and Pat Davies who scored twice); however, while it was an early match and the first official match for England, it was not the first international match.

According to RSSSF, there was an international match between Venezuela and Colombia in 1966 and an international women's tournament in Italy in 1969 (between Italy, France, Denmark and England) and again in 1970 (between Italy, England, Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Austria, and Switzerland). However, all of those earlier matches may not have been official as they may not have been under the auspices of some of the national federations, at least in the cases of England which doesn't recognize any games before 1972 and France, which doesn't recognize any games before 1971. (France's earliest official game was in November 1971 against Italy.)

 

Please find the 1971 match in color.

 

Here's my rough explanation , for what it's worth:
"Broad day" = great/beautiful day
"Bonnie lassies" = lovely/happy young ladies
"Brass monkeys" = referring to it being very cold. Saying is that 'it is so cold it could freeze the ****s off a brass monkey', IIRC.

Stuart Gibbs has done a lot of research into the early Scotland team/players and has an exhibition called 'First Ladies of football'. Sadly' one of the pioneers/players on that team, passed away quite recently.

 

Women's football in 1917 in Portsmouth:



It's one of my favourite football pictures - not sure about the teams, but it was a time of great popularity for the women's game, just a few years before the FA's disgraceful ban on women from playing football in FA clubs' grounds.

(We need some kind of history thread. This'll do!)

The photo was uploaded by the Dutch National Archive.

 

This week there was an article about Scotland's 1972 team having a reunion:

- https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/how-scotlands-first-womens-football-13737629 (Archived)

 

Brazil: In another "home of football", Brazil, the government shamefully banned women from playing football and other sports from 1941 until 1979.

Other countries would also have similar bans - does anyone know any? Decades later, it's clear that the sport is still recovering.

The 21st-century Brazil team at the Pan Am Games
(Wilson Dias/ABr, cc-by)​

 

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There's a great Oscar Wilde quote about football:

“Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but it is hardly suitable for delicate boys.”

He was ahead of his time...

This page has a wider history of women's football 1881 to 1921:

The Story of Women’s Football during World War One
- www.footballandthefirstworldwar.org/womens-football-first-world-war/ (Archived)

It's by Dr Jean Williams, the author of ‘A Game for Rough Girls: A History of Women’s Football in England’.

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Carolyne Culver wrote:

"Women have been kicking balls for more than 100 years. The only reason the women’s game is not as lauded as the men’s at the beginning of the 21st century is because of the obstacles thrown in its path during the 20th. In 1921 the FA banned 'unsuitable' women’s teams from using men’s league grounds, despite – or perhaps because of – the growing popularity of the women’s game. During the First World War, attendances at women’s games began to outstrip those at men’s matches. On Boxing Day 1920, 53,000 watched Dick Kerr’s Ladies, munition factory workers from Preston, beat St Helen’s Ladies 4-0 at Goodison Park. It was another 50 years before the FA gave in to pressure from UEFA and lifted the ban."

(When Saturday Comes, 2002)​

But the English ban was broken by women's teams on at least one occasion. Photos have emerged of a friendly match at Luton Town in 1935, and a player was identified as Laura Wiltsher:

Luton Town plea over 'illegal' women's 1935 football games
- www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46059696 (Archived)

Luton Town 'illegal' women's football player identified
- www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46209578 (Archived)

Laura Wiltsher before the 1935 game at Kenilworth Road
(BBC article)​

 

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American thread for 'old' U.S. stuff – please use it

- https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/youtube-deep-dive-old-interviews.2088615/

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Germany: Front-page news in 1930, Lotte Specht


'Charlotte Specht (1911-2002) founded in 1930 the first German women's football club, 1st DFC Frankfurt. The butcher's daughter had searched by newspaper advertisement for fellow campaigners, because they wanted to "not only watch, but play" on the football field. With her outrageous story, the brave kicker even made the front page of the "Illustrated Journal". After heavy public criticism - customers complained in her father's shop about the "unseemly behavior" of his daughter - and in the face of burgeoning National Socialism, the dejected players surrendered and dissolved their club after only a year.' - (Der Spiegel) Article: "Women's football in Germany" (Archived)

 

Also in Germany, a 1957 West German match against North Holland.



This is from a very detailed series of articles on post-1950 German women's football. Also in 1957, a four-team European Championship was held in West Berlin.

Article: "Women's football in the Verbotszeit", BPB.de (Archived)
Full series: BPB Dossier, Die graue Spielzeit

 

Austria has had women's football for just as long – this is a lovely picture from the 1930s of a women's game. The ceremonial kickoff was taken by Matthias Sindelar, who was perhaps Austria's greatest ever men's footballer



Article: "Women's football of the interwar period", HDGÖ (Archived)

 

More info from the Vienna wiki. The Austrian league was really active at that time, starting with club Diana in 1924. Club Austria apparently played a 1936 away game at Czech team Sparta Brno. In 1938 women's football stopped because of the Nazi regime in Austria. I'd like to say the women's game resumed soon after the War, but that would be a lie.

- www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Frauenfußball, Autotranslated (Archived)

Badge of Österreichischer Damen Fußball-Club Vienna, 1935​

 

Some pretty decent soccer---they knew what they were doing.

 

Staying in the Alpine nations, Switzerland: some records were discovered of rare matches in Adilswil in 1939 and 1949, and possibly earlier Swiss games.

"Sensational discovery"
- seit1968.ch/2018/12/19/sensationelle-entdeckung, Autotranslated (Archived)

FC Töchterchor, 1939
(from seit1968.ch / Archiv Erich Huber, Adliswil, www.windstill.ch)​

Better change the name of that website, "since1968"

 

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History of Women's Football in Africa - ePlange Library (Archive)

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A Brief History of Women’s Football in Croatia/Yugoslavia during the Interwar Period - https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=312347 (Archive)

A 25-page article Thanks to Stipica Grgić for doing so much research. This is the abstract:

"By the end of the 1930s, there was a short-lived appearance of women’s football that shows that the modernisation of society had led to attempts to shift this sport towards the female population as well. Despite a good start, i.e. the establishment of several women’s football clubs on the territory of today’s Croatia (their formation occurred nowhere else in Yugoslavia), mixed, often negative or even mocking articles, followed the first female football games, matches in the summer of 1938 that attracted thousands to the stadium stands of the largest Yugoslav cities. In the wake of these games, several female and male functionaries attempted to form a female football federation. Unfortunately, in a largely pre-modern society, in which women still did not have the same civil rights as men, with an intense presence of medical stereotypes about the impact of sports on women and a strong state authority that tried to control all sporting efforts, women’s football was effectively banned by a Ministry of Physical Education’s decree in early 1939. It took several decades to restore the idea of women’s football in Croatia and Yugoslavia." - (Stipica Grgić, Hrčak)


Women's football in the Balkans: Terra incognita, by Alina Schwermer (Archive)

(Wiki)​

Scotland: The first ever women's match, at Easter Road in Edinburgh in 1881. 1881. (Eighteen Eighty-One)

The strange birth of women's football, by Stuart Gibbs (Archive)
https://footballpink.net/2018-10-24-the-strange-birth-of-womens-football/

"The Scotland side’s 3-0 success received extensive press coverage, not only at home but abroad too with papers such as the New York Sun, the Montreal Daily Mail and the Sydney Evening News carrying the story. Women’s football was a global event right from the very start." - (Stuart Gibbs, The Football Pink)

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Love those Tifo vids. I'm thinking of bumping the women's Fans thread Great Videos, just to post random stuff that is awesome
I wrote a little about the 1920 Goodison record crowd in last year's thread. Boxing Day will mark the anniversary.

Was going to post this later, it's related - from a 1st World War history project by Esther Johnson, including a great striker in north-east England:

The Great War’s hidden stories reveal heroism and tragedy in equal measure
https://theconversation.com/the-gre...al-heroism-and-tragedy-in-equal-measure-89632 / Archive / Licenced: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0

The goal scorer
On Christmas Day 1917 the citizens of Blyth in Northumberland turned out in large numbers to see Blyth Spartans play their Munitionette Cup rivals Gosforth Aviation, in aid of the Duke of Wellington Social Club’s Parcel Fund. The final score was a 6-0 win for Spartans, including a hat trick from a 17-year-old Bella Reay.

Reay, the daughter of a coal miner, was a munitions worker in the South docks of Blyth. She took any opportunity to kick a football around on the nearby sands during factory work breaks and would go on to become a top footballer, scoring 133 goals as centre forward in a single season. During World War I, thousands of women munition workers played football, but Blyth Spartans Ladies’ FC were exceptional.

The Spartans were unbeatable (from 33 games in one season, they won 29, and drew four), winning the Munitionettes’ Cup Final on May 18 1918 at Middlesborough’s Ayresome Park in front of a crowd of 22,000. In a time of austerity and fear, Reay and her team not only kept the crowds in good spirits but also raised over £2,000 for the local community.

Women’s football during the war was both competitive and highly skilled. But as the war came to an end and munitions factories closed, teams crumpled and disbanded. A few women continued to play until 1921 when the FA banned women’s football on their grounds - a ban not lifted until the 1970s.

Reay married and became Mrs Henstock, having two daughters. She worked for years in the shipyards at Blyth. After retirement she was enticed back to play a few matches to help raise funds, playing for Cowpen, Cambois, and a team known simply as Blyth. She could still score goals, scoring all four in Cowpen’s 4-0 win between Cowpen and Bebside.

I spoke to Yvonne Crawford, Reay’s granddaughter, who told me how ladies football was used as a way to raise funds for the soldiers wounded in the war and how Reay took to it. She said:

"She loved her football, she loved it. Everybody wanted her, because she was such a good goal scorer. She played for the Munitionette’s, she played for Blyth Spartan’s, she played for Northumberland, she played for England. She used to say to me, ‘I was good, but mind I knew I was’."

- (The Conversation)​

The rest of the story:

Blyth Spartans AFC: Ladies doing it for themselves
https://blythspirit.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/ladies-doing-it-for-themselves/ (Archive)

It was also covered in a BBC News report in 2014.

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These days, I am reading Stefano Massini's book "Ladies Football Club":



It's a fictional work, but it's based on real life events, since the 11 members of the team described in this novel are workers in an ammunitions and bombs factory who, towards the end of the Great War in 1917, founded a women's football team.

As I said, the characters are completely fictional, but the core of the story is obviously based on the real stories we're writing about on this thread. I am just at chapter 4 of the book. When I'll finish it, I'll let you know if something else will emerge that will be interesting by an historical point of view.


Anyway, as fictional as it is, it's already clear to me since the first pages that it's a story that's not just about women's football but about women's emancipation also. Although it's not exactly an "historical" work, I guessed it could belong to this thread anyway and the very fact that a novel was written about the beginnings of women's football in England is quite meaningful in itself, in my eyes.

 

And an Italian novel... Yes, this is significant. That history in England only seemed to become well known recently; I'm not sure exactly when.

But football went back a bit further by a few centuries
https://www.womenssoccerscene.co.uk/womens-football-history/womens-football-history.htm (Archive)


In Scotland, one article on a 1946 argument over women's football also discusses the first known games there. The second link mentions an 1892 match held by the Scottish FA but is mostly about the 1960s clubs.

1946: Edinburgh Lady Dynamos - https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/womens-football-team-banned-edinburgh-1524172 (Archive)

How Stewarton Thistle and Westthorn Utd started a new era - https://www.footballscotland.co.uk/features/long-reads/how-stewarton-thistle-westthorn-utd-15624953 (Archive)


More from BRZ: "Why women's soccer was banned in Brazil" on ozy.com (Archive)

In France, Reims had a club in the 1920s women's league. And the cité des sacres was also at the forefront of the revival.
During the national revolt of May 1968(!), Reims... founded a football team.
www.footdelles.com, "Mai 68", Autotranslated (Archive)
www.coeursdefoot.fr, "Pionnières rémoises", Autotranslated (Archive)


England during the ban era, another team who broke the prohibitions – Stoke United Ladies made an international challenge to any team. Les Sportives de Paris answered the call and the clubs met in Barcelona in 1923, contesting a cup. In Stoke's last match, they beat Dick Kerr's Ladies.
http://donmouth.co.uk/womens_football/stoke_ladies.html (Archive)

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Manchester Corinthians (est.1949) won a European Cup tournament in 1959 in Berlin, and also toured South America and the Caribbean.
https://tamesidesop.wordpress.com/2018/07/12/its-coming-home-it-came-home-in-1959/ (Archive)

Getting near the end of the thread's era of focus, in 1966 women's teams played a game during the men's World Cup in England.
Of course, ranking old male footballers by their social attitudes is a pointless exercise. So let's do it.

...so, Eusébio = cool, and Germano = not cool.
Actually, the England men's team, who won that year's trophy, might've been the coolest:

I underestimated Turkey's history in women's football – women gained many equal rights after 1923, although the law was more liberal than society was. The first known game was on the same site as the Beşiktaş v Atlético Madrid 2020 match – the story's told in Wikipedia's Women's football in Turkey, using research by Dr Lale Orta on futbolekonomi.com, in Turkish (Archive).

(pd)​

 

I'm betting back during WW1, women were playing like a bunch of 5 year olds. No positioning, no technique, just chasing after and kicking the ball randomly without looking up to see who they need to pass.

 

And sexist bro's hollering at them from the sidelines...

The coaching would've been the best that was still available in the country during wartime, AFAIK. The 1910s in men's football were still the days of the 2-3-5 formation and some rough tactics we wouldn't recognize today, e.g. the laws didn't protect the goalkeepers well. Not sure why I'm bothering to answer tbh