Tim Tate - Girls With Balls

[dem bones]

For those who enjoyed chapter two of Football's Comic Book Heroes here's a near perfect companion piece.

Tim Tate - Girls With Balls: The Secret History of Women's Football (John Blake, 2013)

Blurb
In their day they were bigger than Beckham. They were working class factory girls who played in front of vast crowds throughout Britain and became celebrities across the world. They threatened the entire male-dominated bastion of 20th-Century football. So the F.A. plotted to shut them down.

Understandably, the bulk of Mr. Tate's history is devoted to the relatively well-documented trials, tribulations and remarkable triumphs in the face of adversary of Preston's finest, The Dick, Kerr's Ladies (1917-1969). However, the story properly begins in 1885 with the formation of the short-lived but positively revolutionary British Ladies football Club, whose matches were played out in the face of riot, pitch-invasion, and speculation that their star player - variously billed as "Miss N. Gilbert" and "Miss Daisy Allen" - was actually the fourteen-year-old son of a less capable team-mate. Whatever his/ her gender, "Tommy" drew the crowds and column inches and can justly hold claim to being the first superstar of the women's game.

Two years later, "Tommy" and the rest of BLFC disappeared off radar in mysterious, possibly even acrimonious circumstances, and that was pretty much the end of phase one. But the outbreak of "the War to end all Wars", ushered in a second wave of women's football, and with it, the celebrated munitions factory team, Dick, Kerr Ladies. According to Mr. Tate, a possible catalyst for the revival was a fund-raising game in Ulveston on Christmas Day, 1916, pitting local factory girls versus a scratch 'Rest of England XI'. In the immediate aftermath, women's teams mushroomed across the North, although many played up to their novelty value by competing in ridiculous fancy dress and generally embracing gimmickry (male opponents playing with one hand tied behind their backs, etc). It was all in a good cause, and crowds like to be entertained after all. Dick, Kerr Ladies didn't go in for such novelties. They were a serious football outfit and inspired by Alfred Frankland, their visionary Manager-Chief Scout-Publicity Officer, they would put the women's game on the map, raising an estimated £1 million for their several charities in the process. Such was their fame that the team regularly toured overseas decades before the F.A. would deign to acknowledge a world beyond the British Isles, on one occasion braving German U-boats to do so. Their "cup final" versus St. Helens on Boxing Day, 1920, attracted a capacity 56, 000 spectators to Everton's Goodison Park, with 14, 000 locked outside. Small wonder the stuffed shirts at the FA (many of whom are believed to hold office to this day) underwent spontaneous nose combustion. How could the proper, Men's game compete with these Jezebels?

Frankland was a shrewd operator who, it seems, was not beyond fiddling the books to keep his team afloat, a practice which ultimately cost the women's game dear when the FA got nasty. Promising players were poached on the promise of steady employment at the factory and playing expenses. Arguably Frankland's most astute steal was the extraordinary Lily Parr, snapped up from arch rivals St. Helens as a sweary-mouthed, chain-smoking, gobbing 14 year old street urchin. The way Mr. Tate writes it, Lily might have been the flapper equivalent of Columbia's equally combustible and super-talented Lady Andrade. Her propensity for lovely grub and Woodbines notwithstanding, Lily was a soccer sorceress on the wing with a vicious temper and a left boot to match. One possibly apocryphal tale has it that, goaded by an opposing goalkeeper, she let fly a shot so venomous it broke his arm when he was mug enough to try and save it. Teammate Joan Whalley would later recall:

“She had a kick like a mule, she was the only person I knew who could lift a dead ball, the old heavy leather ball, from the left wing over to me on the right and nearly knock me out with the force of the shot. When she took a left corner kick, it came over like a bullet, and if you ever hit one of those with your head ... I only ever did it once and the laces on the ball left their impression on my forehead and cut it open.”

In a career spanning 32 years, Lily scored over 900 goals, and shares the distinction of being the first woman player to have been sent off after she and Stoke United's Hilda Durbar were dismissed for fighting during a friendly in April 1921 at Port Vale FC's then home, The Old Recreation Ground. Openly Lesbian in an uptight age, shortly after losing her factory job in 1921, Lily took work at Whittingham Hospital where she met and set up house with her soul mate, Mary. The F.A. were not thrilled.

The ban? We'll come to that. Only quibbles so far (hence the "near perfect"): the "treasure trove of contemporary photographs" promised on the inner flap rather overstates the matter, and this library-loaned copy duplicates several pages, making for a frustrating and very confusing reading experience.

- Fem Dem

[ripper]

Lily Parr--900+ goals in 32 years--that's quite a record. What a shame these pioneering women are mostly forgotten nowadays. I am sure it will come as quite a surprise to many--including myself--to discover just how popular women's football was back then.

[dem bones]

Aug 30, 2015 11:51:33 GMT ripper said:

Lily Parr--900+ goals in 32 years--that's quite a record. What a shame these pioneering women are mostly forgotten nowadays. I am sure it will come as quite a surprise to many--including myself--to discover just how popular women's football was back then.

Lily Parr remains the only female player inducted into the FA Hall of Fame, though it's not unlikely some from the current generation will join her, especially if they can build on their exciting World Cup exploits.

Even taking into account that, for obvious reasons, the Football League was suspended from late 1914-1918, the draw of the women's game was astonishing, which became a problem when the men returned home. The FA wanted their monopoly back, but how to stop the show overnight? Easy. They simply prohibited their members from using their facilities to host women's football matches, effectively making the teams homeless overnight. Alfred Frankland, who, in the eyes of the FA, had by now become public enemy number one, arranged a Dick, Kerr Ladies Canadian tour, only to be told on arrival that the authorities had changed their mind and they couldn't play. Undeterred, Franklin scheduled several friendlies in America, which saw the girls conquering the States via the scenic route (all very reminiscent of Malcolm McClaren's clueless mismanagement of the Sex Pistols ill-fated US tour. These cities look very close together on a map). By the time the girls returned home, there were few teams left to play, and no Deepdale to call home. Scandalously, the ban stayed in force until the early 'seventies.