Ladies’ Football

From the Lancashire Evening Post, 10th November 1917.

NOT A SERIOUS MOVEMENT.

I am old enough in the game to remember the touring teams that were run by a few enterprising people somewhere about the mid nineties, a venture which fizzled out owing to the split which occurred in it and the action of the F.A. in prohibiting the use of grounds for the commercial exploitation of women players.  Ladies' football was a novelty then, as it is now, and as a novelty there were plenty of people ready to patronise it for an odd time.  The time has not yet arrived when women can enter into masculine sports and gave spectacular interest to them except that which arises from their sex, and one has only to go back to the ladies' cricket campaign that was on exhibition about the time when the football ladies were going about to realise the limitations of their sex in field games.  There were one or two fair bats and bowlers, especially in the "Reds" team, I remember, but they would have cut a poor figure against any average club side, and physically, of course, women were not able to compete with men on level terms in these things.  But if they themselves can find enjoyment in their own games, and incidentally tickle the public fancy for the moment in the interests of a deserving object I do not see why they should not be encouraged.  Of one thing we may be certain—any attempt to establish ladies' football as a regular and recognised pursuit would very quickly fail, and there is no reason, apart from the sentimental dislike that many people have to see girls and women taking part in masculine pastimes, why the tendency of the moment should be frowned down.  The vagaries of the weather, the knocks and falls incidental to strenuous football, and the physical disabilities of the participants are quite sufficient barriers to any degree of seriousness being attached to the craze.

[We have come a long way in 100 years.  Though not far enough.]