LIKE millions of others, I loved watching England’s women playing in the Euros. The games, especially in the latter stages, were immensely thrilling, and winning the final was a wondrous achievement.

But many will be disgusted when they hear of the shocking history of women’s football. For instance, just over a century ago, it was very popular - often drawing bigger crowds than the men’s game. This came about because men went off to fight in the First World War and women replaced them in the factories. So it was from there that ladies football began to grow rapidly.

On Christmas Day 1917, a women’s team representing the Dick Kerr and Co Munitions Factory in Preston, Lancashire, played a game that drew a crowd of 10,000! And on Boxing Day 1920, 53,000 filled Goodison Park to watch them play, with many thousands outside, disappointed!

The big name in women’s football at the time was Lilian ‘Lily’ Parr. She played on the wing for the Dick Kerr factory team and became one of the first female professional footballers in the world – being paid 10 shillings per game (not a small amount at the time). As she was a chain-smoker, they supplemented her fees with Woodbine cigarettes.

But after the war, there was mounting societal pressure for women to abandon their position as factory workers, and return to their former roles as unpaid mothers and domestic ‘slaves’. Moreover, these were politically turbulent times as the reprivatisation of the coal industry led to industrial strikes and a protracted class war. To support their relatives and friends in dispute, the Lancashire women played regular fundraising matches. But in 1921 the public school elite, who ran the English Football Association, took revenge on the women by banning them from using FA-affiliated pitches. Their ostensible excuse was that ‘the rules of association football were quite unsuitable for women’.

But the real reason was that they wanted to smash the workers. (Google: ‘Sky History – Lily Parr’). So, from 1921 onwards, the women’s game went into decline but it didn’t stop Lily and others performing their skills on village greens that were not controlled by the FA. Nevertheless, competing professionally was out of the question. Lily eventually retired from playing in 1951 but lived to witness the ban being lifted through the rise of the Women’s Rights Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Her death in 1978 coincided with my first year of teaching in Barnsley primary schools, and even as late as that there was huge resistance from the Old Guard for the creation of a school girls’ football league. Fielding girls in a boys’ team was strictly prohibited and many-a-time teachers were censured for it.

But by the start of the new millennium things had begun to change. Two female teacher-colleagues and I, grafted hard to create two teams which included girls with real ability. Unfortunately, at this time, we had a head teacher who undervalued sport, plus a national drive for schools to focus on core subjects and abandon the creative, sporting and fun side of learning.

In 2002, the name ‘Lily Parr’ came to national prominence again when she became the first woman to be inducted into the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame in Manchester. And there, in 2019, a bronze statue of her was also unveiled. Two years later, a new permanent display was opened at the museum to celebrate Lily’s life and her impact on the game.

Thanks to Lily Parr and all those women who fought for equal rights, we now have hundreds of thriving female football clubs, and a national team to be proud of. Just think where we’d be today if all those stuffed-shirts at the English FA had not got away with victimising our female footballers. Imagine the level of competence we’d be at, and the pleasure they would have given, if their game had not been held back for over half a century?

Lily Parr was a big powerful woman who lived in an openly lesbian relationship with her partner, Mary, and became an icon for women’s rights and LGBT rights.

I’ll finish with a legendary tale that sums up, perfectly, the physical power of this historic figure: A goalkeeper once blocked, with her arm, one of Lily’s thunderous shots. When the trainer came onto the pitch to administer first aid, the goalie moaned: “Get me to the hospital as quick as you can. She’s gone and broken my flamin’ arm!”