Gail Newsham - The Dick, Kerr Ladies and me!

Hello! My name is Gail Newsham, and I am the author of the first book about ladies’ football to be written by a female football player. In a League of Their Own! is a history of the Dick, Kerr Ladies who were the most successful women’s football team the world has seen.

As we celebrate the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Football League, we should also remember the incredible achievements of the Dick, Kerr Ladies who were formed in Preston in 1917.

I first heard of them in the early 1960s when I was out in the streets playing football with the lads. I grew up near the factory where the team was formed and as the only girl joining in these games, I couldn’t quite understand how there could have been a ladies’ team, because when I went to school, girls weren’t allowed to play football.

But people in Preston always spoke very highly of the Dick, Kerr Ladies and I would often wonder about them with envy.

It wasn’t until 1972 that I began playing in a ladies’ team myself. The North West Women’s League was formed in the late 1960s and the FA finally lifted their ban on the ladies’ game in 1971.

But I had never met anyone who had played for the Dick, Kerr Ladies until I met Brenda Eastwood in 1991.

By this time I was organising an International Women’s Football Tournament, The Lancashire Trophy, and meeting Brenda gave me the idea of trying to organise a reunion of the team.

After a lot of hard work, the reunion took place in 1992 at the Lancashire Trophy. It was almost forty years since they had last been together and it was a very special and emotional night.

Meeting them made me realise that their story was bigger than anyone could imagine and I knew that something needed to be done quickly otherwise their amazing story could have been lost forever.

I spent the next two years researching their history and my book was first published in 1994.

I feel very proud of bringing these ladies back together because it really did change all of our lives. Had I not captured the wealth of information about them when I did, a huge slice of women’s sporting and social history would have been lost without trace.

A bit of history

The Dick, Kerr Ladies began playing football at a munitions factory in Preston during the First World War to raise funds for wounded soldiers. Dick, Kerr and Company Limited enlisted the help of thousands of women while the men were away fighting in France.

The Dick, Kerr Ladies played their first game at Deepdale, the home of Preston North End on Christmas Day 1917 in front of 10,000 spectators. They won 4-0 and raised £600 for the wounded soldiers. And so began the most incredible success story in the history of women’s sport.

They went from strength to strength and always played in front of big crowds. On Boxing Day 1920 they played at Goodison Park, Everton in front of 53,000 spectators and there was around 10,000-14,000 who were unable to get inside the ground!

By 1921 they were the team that everyone wanted to see and had been booked to play an average of two games a week. In that year they played over 65 games of football while still working full-time at the factory and almost 900,000 people came to watch them.

However, the FA was not happy with the ladies’ success and on 5 December 1921 the FA banned them from using League grounds and effectively changed the course of the women’s game forever. The ban lasted for fifty years and was probably the biggest sporting injustice of the last century.

Imagine what could have happened if the women’s game had been allowed to grow at the same rate as men’s football and the top female players had an equal status on and off the field.

A call to write

It seems to me that football has been treated differently than most other sports. For example, other sporting superstars such as Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah are recognised equally for their individual success, but equal recognition doesn’t happen in football. Why do you think this is? Is it the nature of the sport itself? Or the historical context that surrounds it?

What female players do you think would compare to the top male players today?

Do you think it unfair that female players such as Kelly Smith and Stephanie Houghton do not get the same recognition as say Wayne Rooney or Gareth Bale?

It’s important to think about what events or people inspire or challenge you when you’re choosing something to write about. Then you’ll be more inspired to research and write!

My own experiences as a player gave me the inspiration to write about the Dick, Kerr Ladies. Is there an event in your life, or an event in history or perhaps a role model that has inspired you? Think about it, then go write!

Gail Newsham

Gail Newsham is an ex-footballer and author of 'In a League of Their Own!', the official history of Dick, Kerr Ladies FC. Follow her on Twitter @GailNewsham

Helena Pielichaty - 'In your face, Jason's dad!'

I’m delighted to be the first contributor to this exciting new blog, especially as the timing coincides with so many significant events such as International Women’s Day (March 8th),  World Book Day (March 7th) and the 125th anniversary of the Football League (1888–2013).  I can’t think of three things closer to my heart than celebrating equal rights for women, books and football, so my blog is going to combine all three strands.

Let me start with a true story.  On a chilly Saturday morning in March 1995, I was standing with my husband on the touchline of a primary school’s football pitch in Newark, Nottinghamshire, watching an inter-schools U11s match. The bloke next to me had been growing more and more agitated at his son’s performance.  Finally, after the boy was, once again, skinned by the ten-year-old girl he was trying to mark, the dad snapped. ‘What are you doing, Jason, you useless lump!  How can you let a lass tackle you like that? What’s wrong with you?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with him,’ I said, ‘it’s just that the girl is very good.’
 ‘But that’s just it: she’s a girl!’

The bloke was fuming, clearly disgusted at this world gone mad – so much so he stormed off, preferring to sit the rest of the match out in his car than on the pitch.

I’ll never know what happened to Jason, but I do know that the girl, my daughter, Hanya (pictured left, at West Bromwich Albion Ladies), would go on to play football at high school, at university, for her county and at senior level for many years to come.

I thought of that incident while researching the early development of the women’s game for the opening chapter of Here Come the Girls for Collins Read On!

I was reading through historian Patrick Brennan’s website, studying his section on the trailblazing British Ladies FC.

I already knew that the BLFC had been founded in 1895 by Nettie Honeyball and were an attempt by Honeyball and other members of the suffragist movement to show that: ‘women were more than mere ornaments.’

I also knew that the ‘Lady Footballers’ caused quite a stir and played over a hundred exhibition matches up and down the British Isles. What I didn’t know, until I read the appendix, was that one of those matches had taken place at Newark Town FC’s ground, not a mile from where I’d watched Hanya play.

I went to the library to track down the original match report and was amused to discover that the spectators then were a lot less hostile to girls playing than Jason’s dad appeared to be, a century later. The one-thousand strong crowd: ‘... no way resented the infringement perpetrated by the fair ones in donning semi-masculine attire.’  In your face, Jason’s dad!

Unfortunately other towns gave the British Ladies a much harder time, mocking them for ‘aping’ men and daring to even think they could play football. In Ayrshire, Scotland, a month later, for example, there was: ‘... quite a little riot. One of the ladies got a black eye from some ruffian, the crowd of savages broke in, and the players would not go on.’

What’s gratifying is that things have moved on so much in the women’s game, even since 1995. Nobody bats an eyelid when girls play football at primary and secondary school now, either on mixed teams or in all-girls teams.

Progress is evident at senior level, too. The England FA has finally started investing in the women’s game and in 2011 the Women’s Super League, featuring players paid on a semi-professional basis for the first time, had its inaugural season. To nurture future talent in the same way as men’s clubs do through boys’ academies, there are thirty-one Girls’ Centres of Excellence and a firm player pathway at grassroots level.

There’s been progress in the media, too. In 1995 you would have struggled to find anything about women’s game but now key international matches are shown on TV and the results reported in most papers.

Although attendance invariably and inevitably lags behind that of men’s matches, for the final of the women’s football event at the London 2012 Olympics, a whopping 80,203 crowd turned out to see USA beat Japan 2-1. Girls even have their own bespoke football magazine, She Kicks and there are several websites dedicated to the women’s game. It’s not all hunky-dory, though.

Sexism is never far from the surface as this recent piece in the Peterborough Times from February 22nd illustrates, calling ladies’ sport ‘dull’. There’s a way to go in other countries, too. I dedicated one of my Girls FC titles, So What if I Hog the Ball?, to Eudy Simelane, captain of the South African Women’s football team, who was brutally murdered in 2008 for being openly gay.

But let’s not dwell on the negatives. Let’s celebrate World Book Day by reading about women in sport. Let’s celebrate International Women’s Day by paying homage to Nettie Honeyball, Eudy Simelane and many, many more men and women who’ve made it easier for girls today to compete at the highest level in their discipline all over the world.  Last but not least let’s celebrate the 125th anniversary of the League because football rocks!

Tell us what you're doing for International Women's Day in the comments, or tweet @FreedomToTeach to win a free copy of Here Come the Girls!

Helena Pielichaty (pronounced Pierre-li-hatty) has written over thirty books for children. Her latest series, Girls FC, is set around a fictional girls’ football team so she was delighted to be asked to write her first non-fiction book for Collins Education on a subject close to her heart.