PITCH BATTLE
The 2019 Women’s Football World Cup is about to start in France, a gigantic event and showpiece of the beautiful game as it grows more diverse and increasingly gives female players a stage on which to show their skill. But 100 years ago, for the pioneering women who were part of the very first golden age of women’s football, it was a very different story. On the one hand they had their many staunch supporters, but on the other, in a world controlled by men and with narrow social attitudes, there was prejudice, hostility and ridicule, and these fledgling players had to fight tooth and nail to try and earn the right to play the game they loved.
In the closing years of the Victorian Age many women had embraced new sports and new fashion. The popularity of the new ‘rational’ dress of jacket and knickerbocker-style trousers gave women the freedom they desired to pursue sports other than those deemed ‘suitable’ by society. Cycling and rambling now joined the ranks of tennis and croquet as activities in which women could engage comfortably. But, most surprisingly to many, football was also added to the list, pioneered by middle and upper class women such as the famous adventurer and feminist Lady Florence Dixie who in 1894, along with Nettie Honeyball, formed the British Ladies Football Club, playing games for a variety of charities with Nettie as captain. We can be in no doubt that a statement was being made, and with an estimated crowd of some 12,000 for their first match the ladies had certainly got themselves noticed. was, however, mixed in its views on the ladies’ match:
