.png)
A 53,000 crowd watched two female teams play at Everton's Goodison Park – in 1920. What went wrong for women's football?
Last year, more than 70,000 people paid good money to watch Great Britain's women's team play football at Wembley during the Olympics. Prior to that game, the record attendance for a women's game in the UK was the 53,000 spectators who saw two club sides compete way back in 1920. It's a startling revelation. But the really surprising fact lies somewhere between those two numbers, between those two matches, where 92 years had to pass before the women's game could muster the sort of following that Dick, Kerr's Ladies (DKL) football team gathered in the early part of last century for that 1920 match at Everton's football ground. Why? What happened to women's football in those years? The answers to those questions, and indeed the story of the game's beginnings in the late 19th century, is the subject of a new book by Tim Tate, an author and award-winning documentary maker.
Girls with Balls – The Secret History of Women's Football, is full of unknown or unremembered heroes of the game. Tate manages to get only fleeting glimpses of the early figures in women's football – the likes of Nettie Honeyball, who in 1894 founded the British Ladies Football Club. He has a photograph of her, head rippling with short curls, burly trousers tucked into shinpads. He views her in archive material sewing a football kit, for instance, but then finds she never lived at the address given for her, there are no N Honeyballs he can find, and she slips phantom-like from his grasp. There are others of this ilk. "Tommy", gender unconfirmed, who was one of the best players in Honeyball's team. Or "Mrs Graham" who enlivened the game in Scotland. Given the then widespread disapproval of female footballers, it is hardly surprising many used pseudonyms. Nor, perhaps, that almost all players inscribed their teams as "Ladies", a practice that persists today; six of the eight clubs in this season's Women's Super League, the pinnacle of women's football in England, have attached the word "Ladies" to their name, as if even current players feel compelled to rebut some presumed question about their femininity.
Certainly, the Football Association perpetuated this idea when it declared in December 1921 its "strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged". The FA banned its affiliated men's clubs from loaning pitches to women, and instigated the women's game's slow demise. (To this day, finding places to play remains one of the sport's great challenges.) Perhaps the FA disliked the way women's football was profiting from the gap left by the men's game, which had been suspended during the first world war. Back then, women's football was healthy: the number of players was growing, it was drawing more spectators than equivalent men's sides and DKL manager Albert Frankland had shown that there was money in it – something no one in the UK has since been able to prove. By 1920 the club had raised £8,600 for charity – a figure Tate equates to more than £1.7m today. If the FA hadn't made its unwelcome pronouncement, if it hadn't manouevred to prevent women from playing by subsequently banning its referees from arbitrating their matches and then taken 49 years to reconsider its judgment, where would women's football be now?
Vic Akers, the overseer of Arsenal Ladies (as well as kit man for the men's team), is possibly the Frankland of his day. Working for the men's side has allowed him to forge links between the two. Many of his female players have been employed by the club - in the community or ticket office - so they can earn and train. Akers, however, could only dream of seeing 50,000 fans at a club game. He estimates Arsenal's gate to be about 800 and "wouldn't anticipate it improving massively". Why not? "I still feel there's a – what can I say? – a chauvinism against the game," he says.
These days the FA not only recognises women's football but promotes it, though it took until 1993 for it to bring the women's game within its auspices. It launched the semi-professional Super League in 2011, but it is still playing the villain: in the current season, the FA has caused uproar by relegating Doncaster Rovers Belles after their very first match to enable the promotion of wealthy Manchester City in their place. It retains the England coach Hope Powell in post despite a disappointing showing over 15 years: when she goes, perhaps that will be proof of its seriousness.
Natasha Dowie, who plays for Liverpool and is the Super League's current top scorer with 12 goals from 15 games, has heard of Dick, Kerr Ladies. "My nan and granddad got me watching a film about them," she says. At Liverpool the players are paid a salary. Thirty thousand? "More like half that," Dowie says, although those in the England squad receive an additional stipend worth about £20,000. "There's so much money out there," she says. "It's frustrating there's not more for women's football. People sacrifice a lot. A lot of the players haven't made a career in other things because of football. A lot of the time, it's their everything."
She's right, and it might have been so much more. If it weren't for the FA ban, perhaps male footballers (for that's what we would call them) would be scrabbling to find 11 matching jerseys, and perhaps the women's game might not be football's second sport.
- theguardian.com
 |
| Great Britain's Karen Carney tackled by Katie Hoyle of New Zealand at the 2012 Olympics. |
Last year, more than 70,000 people paid good money to watch Great Britain's women's team play football at Wembley during the Olympics. Prior to that game, the record attendance for a women's game in the UK was the 53,000 spectators who saw two club sides compete way back in 1920. It's a startling revelation. But the really surprising fact lies somewhere between those two numbers, between those two matches, where 92 years had to pass before the women's game could muster the sort of following that Dick, Kerr's Ladies (DKL) football team gathered in the early part of last century for that 1920 match at Everton's football ground. Why? What happened to women's football in those years? The answers to those questions, and indeed the story of the game's beginnings in the late 19th century, is the subject of a new book by Tim Tate, an author and award-winning documentary maker.
Girls with Balls – The Secret History of Women's Football, is full of unknown or unremembered heroes of the game. Tate manages to get only fleeting glimpses of the early figures in women's football – the likes of Nettie Honeyball, who in 1894 founded the British Ladies Football Club. He has a photograph of her, head rippling with short curls, burly trousers tucked into shinpads. He views her in archive material sewing a football kit, for instance, but then finds she never lived at the address given for her, there are no N Honeyballs he can find, and she slips phantom-like from his grasp. There are others of this ilk. "Tommy", gender unconfirmed, who was one of the best players in Honeyball's team. Or "Mrs Graham" who enlivened the game in Scotland. Given the then widespread disapproval of female footballers, it is hardly surprising many used pseudonyms. Nor, perhaps, that almost all players inscribed their teams as "Ladies", a practice that persists today; six of the eight clubs in this season's Women's Super League, the pinnacle of women's football in England, have attached the word "Ladies" to their name, as if even current players feel compelled to rebut some presumed question about their femininity.
Certainly, the Football Association perpetuated this idea when it declared in December 1921 its "strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged". The FA banned its affiliated men's clubs from loaning pitches to women, and instigated the women's game's slow demise. (To this day, finding places to play remains one of the sport's great challenges.) Perhaps the FA disliked the way women's football was profiting from the gap left by the men's game, which had been suspended during the first world war. Back then, women's football was healthy: the number of players was growing, it was drawing more spectators than equivalent men's sides and DKL manager Albert Frankland had shown that there was money in it – something no one in the UK has since been able to prove. By 1920 the club had raised £8,600 for charity – a figure Tate equates to more than £1.7m today. If the FA hadn't made its unwelcome pronouncement, if it hadn't manouevred to prevent women from playing by subsequently banning its referees from arbitrating their matches and then taken 49 years to reconsider its judgment, where would women's football be now?
Vic Akers, the overseer of Arsenal Ladies (as well as kit man for the men's team), is possibly the Frankland of his day. Working for the men's side has allowed him to forge links between the two. Many of his female players have been employed by the club - in the community or ticket office - so they can earn and train. Akers, however, could only dream of seeing 50,000 fans at a club game. He estimates Arsenal's gate to be about 800 and "wouldn't anticipate it improving massively". Why not? "I still feel there's a – what can I say? – a chauvinism against the game," he says.
These days the FA not only recognises women's football but promotes it, though it took until 1993 for it to bring the women's game within its auspices. It launched the semi-professional Super League in 2011, but it is still playing the villain: in the current season, the FA has caused uproar by relegating Doncaster Rovers Belles after their very first match to enable the promotion of wealthy Manchester City in their place. It retains the England coach Hope Powell in post despite a disappointing showing over 15 years: when she goes, perhaps that will be proof of its seriousness.
Natasha Dowie, who plays for Liverpool and is the Super League's current top scorer with 12 goals from 15 games, has heard of Dick, Kerr Ladies. "My nan and granddad got me watching a film about them," she says. At Liverpool the players are paid a salary. Thirty thousand? "More like half that," Dowie says, although those in the England squad receive an additional stipend worth about £20,000. "There's so much money out there," she says. "It's frustrating there's not more for women's football. People sacrifice a lot. A lot of the players haven't made a career in other things because of football. A lot of the time, it's their everything."
She's right, and it might have been so much more. If it weren't for the FA ban, perhaps male footballers (for that's what we would call them) would be scrabbling to find 11 matching jerseys, and perhaps the women's game might not be football's second sport.
- theguardian.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Grace A Comment!