Who took the ball away from the 150 women’s football clubs in 1921 and why?

 The story of women’s football is quite correctly becoming better known and regaining a prominence it lost for nearly a century.

The growing popularity of the national women’s football team along with those in the Premier clubs and countless other teams across the country have highlighted the history, as well as the struggle of women to play “the beautiful game”.

The ban imposed by the Football Association in 1921 which lasted for a full half century and the sometimes-virulent prejudice directed against women players is now fully catalogued in articles, books and TV documentaries, along with a heap of online sites.  Even the FA now is happy to tell the story.

To these I can add an interesting “reappraisal examining the politics and social history behind” the FA ban.

It is written by Dr. Clare Debenham, Honorary Research Associate at the University of Manchester and takes the story back to 1881 and the founding of Mrs Graham’s Xl by Helen Matthews in Edinburgh.  

It assesses the contribution of Nettie Honeyball who founded the British Ladies Football Club thirteen years later and the importance of Lily Parr who was the first woman to be inducted into English Football’s Hall of Frame, as well as “Emma Clarke the first black woman footballer to be identified in the UK”.

But what I found more fascinating was Dr. Debenham’s account of the women’s game during the Great War and the immediate post war period.  In 1921 there were 150 women’s clubs often playing to capacity crowds, many of which were drawn from women working in factories.

Equally interesting is her suggestion that there might an explanation for the FA ban in the link between some of these teams drawn from working class women and the financial support they provided to miner’s charities during the strikes in 1921. “Money raised by women’s football was used to support local miner’s charities after their own strike funds were exhausted”.**

She goes on to review the reasons trotted out by the FA for the ban and contrasts this with the atmosphere in Britain by the 1970s towards women’s equality referenced by the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act.

It is one of those works which comes at the story from a different angle and acknowledges that some companies were fully supportive, like that of Lyons Corner House which provided a training ground and changing facilities in north London.  There were at least four Corner House teams including one from its main restaurant on the Strand.

And for those wanting to pursue the story there is a useful bibliography.

Picture; cover from The ban on organised women’s football in England by the Football Association, 2021

*The ban on organised women’s football in England by the Football Association in December 1921 and its restoration by them in July 1971.  A reappraisal examining the politics and social history behind these actions”, Clare Debenham, University of Manchester Honorary Research Associate, 2021, revised 2022

*ibid Debenham, page 13