How the FA banned women’s football in 1921 and tried to justify it

Despite women having been turfed out of the workplaces in large numbers and the return of men’s football after its suspension between 1915 and 1919, the women’s game was thriving at the turn of the 1920s, with the Dick, Kerr Ladies – a famous factory team from Preston – at the forefront.

In 1920, the team would play four international home fixtures against a French team led by the women’s sport advocate Alice Milliat at Deepdale, Stockport, in Manchester and then Stamford Bridge. The team then headed to France and played in Paris, Roubaix, Le Havre and Rouen. It would prove to be a hugely popular tour and on the team’s return to England, the hype for a scheduled Boxing Day match against rivals St Helens at Goodison Park was building. Few, though, could have predicted the seismic impact the fixture would have on the future of women’s football.

On the day of the match 53,000 fans would file into the ground for the game with, according to the diary of the player Alice Stanley, a further 10–15,000 supporters turned away from the at-capacity ground. It set an attendance record that would not be surpassed for 92 years – until Team GB beat Brazil at Wembley during the London 2012 Olympics in front of 70,584 – and remains the biggest domestic game in women’s football in England, with the 38,262 who watched Arsenal defeat Tottenham at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 17 November 2019 at No 2.

It reportedly broke another record too, with the Lancashire Evening Post on 28 December 1920 saying: “The most remarkable ‘gate’ of the holiday, however, was at Goodison Park yesterday morning [Boxing Day] where the Dick, Kerr Ladies beat St Helens ladies 4–0 in a match on behalf of the unemployed and disabled ex-service men. The