A Beautiful Game
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A Beautiful Game A Beautiful Game International Perspectives on Women’s Football Jean Williams Oxford • New York First published in 2007 by Berg Editorial offi ces: 1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA © Jean Williams 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Williams, Jean, 1964– A beautiful game : international perspectives on women’s football / Jean Williams. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-674-1 (cloth) ISBN-10: 1-84520-674-6 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-675-8 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 1-84520-675-4 (pbk.) 1. Soccer for women—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Soccer—Social aspects—Cross-cultural studies. I. Title. GV944.5.W54 2007 796.334082—dc22 2007037049 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 84520 674 1 (Cloth) ISBN 978 1 84520 675 8 (Paper) Typeset by Apex Publishing, LLC, Madison, WI Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn www.bergpublishers.com Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Contents Illustrations vii Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations and Acronyms xi Introduction: From A Game for Rough Girls to A Beautiful Game: Dusting the Mirror of Women’s Football 1 1 The Girls of Summer, the Daughters of Title IX: Women’s Football in the United States 33 2 The Iron Roses: Women’s Football in PR China 83 3 A Grass Ceiling: Women’s Football in England 111 4 Waltzing the Matildas: Women’s Football in Australia 157 Conclusion: To Play or Not to Play 177 Bibliography 189 Index 207 – v – Illustrations Figure 1 Festival of Britain Programme, 21 July 1951, Corinthian versus Lancashire Ladies at Barrow. 105 Figure 2 Programme notes of the players France versus Preston, 1948. 105 Figure 3 Stoke versus Dick, Kerr Ladies Programme cover, 1923. 106 Figure 4 London team, circa 1917. 106 Figure 5 Liverpool Ladies Football Team (date unknown but believed to have been circa World War I). 107 Figure 6 Femina postcard. 107 Figures 7 Stoke Ladies’ Football Team playing Femina in Barcelona 1923. 108 and 8 Figure 9 Railway Benevolent Institution, Leeds, 6 April 1921, Alice Mills of Dick, Kerr versus the French team in front of a crowd of 27,000, raising £1,700 for the charity. 109 – vii – Acknowledgements As Julie Burchill never said, just because you visit a BSSH conference, it doesn’t make you a historicist. Knowing a few great sports historians helps though, and is all the more privilege. My indebtedness to past and present colleagues at the Interna- tional Centre for Sports History and Culture is evident in both the time to complete the research and in providing much-needed context. In particular, Matt Taylor’s com- ments on a fi rst draft of the manuscript were characteristically generous, perceptive and thoughtful. Especial thanks to Dil Porter. Quite apart from benefi tting from his professional expertise on a daily basis, you have to respect someone who signs off conversations with senior people by shouting ‘Up the Os’ down the phone without malice intended or offence, presumably, taken. I am grateful for the patience of com- missioning editor, Kathleen May, at Berg; her successor, Hannah Shakespeare; and to Emily Medcalfe, who kindly worked on the design and marketing. The research was funded by a two-year João Havelange Scholarship awarded by CIES, the International Centre for Sports Studies, University of Neuchatel, and funded by Federation Internationale de Football Association, FIFA, the international governing body of football. Professor Jean Louis Juvet and Jérôme Champagne, Deputy General Secretary FIFA, have been most supportive. Given that the fi nd- ings are broadly critical of the federation, it is perhaps a sign of the maturity of their confi dence that they would fund research of this kind and allow me access to the archive. In particular, Tatjana Haenni, Mary Harvey, Arno Flach and his colleagues at the documentation centre made useful suggestions. Clearly, in their generous hos- pitality, they helped the process of research without necessarily agreeing with the conclusions drawn from it, and for that I am acutely grateful. My largest obligation, nevertheless, remains to the women, men, girls and boys who participated, principally to celebrate their love of football. Collectors of wom- en’s memorabilia to whom I am grateful include, in no particular order, Sue Lopez, Gail Newsham, Dr Colin Aldis, Sheila Rollinson, Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet, Peter Bridgett, Angela Moore (aka ‘the chief’), Dennis O’Brien, Julien Garises, Elsie Cook, Jess Macbeth, Winnifred Bourke, Bente Skogvang, Becky Wang, Nancy Thompson, Ali Melling, Debbie Hindley, Barbara Jacobs, Shawn Ladda, plus Jacob Hickey and Rachel Bowering at the BBC, to name but a few. The topic has a long and personal history for me because, at age eleven, going on twelve, I just couldn’t understand why my good friend Annette Astley was no longer allowed to represent the school when she was, in that very matter of fact – ix – x • Acknowledgements way that children calculate others’ ability, the best player. ‘Nessie’ didn’t seem to be offended then and took up other sports. I still mind. Not least because Barwell FC under eleven’s striker is called Sophie. Fortunately, I am continually inspired by my own set of sporting heroes—Kelly, James, Natalie, Tom, Kirsty and Lee. My biggest thanks, as always, is to Simon. Abbreviations and Acronyms AAA Amateur Athletic Association AFA Australian Football Association AFC Asian Football Confederation AIAW Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women ALFC Asian Ladies’ Football Confederation AWSA Australian Women’s Soccer Association CAAWS Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport CAF Confédération Africaine de Football CFA Chinese Football Association China ’91 FIFA Women’s World Championship 1991 CONCACAF Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football CONMEBOL Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol FACA Football Association Coaching Association FA Football Association (English) FAI Football Association of Ireland FAW Football Association of Wales FAWPL Football Association Women’s Premier League FFA Football Federation Australia Ltd FIFA Federation International Football Association FIFA U-17 WC FIFA Under Seventeen World Championship for Men FIFA U 19 WC FIFA Under Nineteen World Cup for Women FIFA U 20 WC FIFA Under Twenty World Cup for Women FSFI Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale HOF Australian Soccer Association Hall of Fame HK$ Hong Kong Dollar IAPESGW International Association for Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women IOC International Olympic Committee ISF International Sports Federations LFAI Ladies’ Football Association of Ireland Korea DPR Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) Korea Republic Republic of Korea (South Korea) – xi – xii • Abbreviations and Acronyms LTA Lawn Tennis Association MLS Major League Soccer NAIA National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics NCAA National Collegiate Athletic Association NOC National Olympic Committees NSL Australian National Soccer League NSWWF New South Wales Women’s Federation OFC Oceania Football Confederation PFA Professional Football Association RMB China Yuan Renminbi ROC Republic of China (Taipei) ROCFA Republic of China Football Association (Taipei) SFA Scottish Football Association SGAS State General Administration of Sports in PR China SWFA Scottish Women’s Football Association UEFA Union des Associations Européennes de Football USSF United States Soccer Federation US$ United States Dollar WCA Women’s Cricket Association WFA Women’s Football Association WFAI Women’s Football Association of Ireland WNBA Women’s National Basketball Association WNSL Women’s National Soccer League WRFU Women’s Rugby Football Union WUSA Women’s United Soccer Association WWC ’99 Women’s World Cup 1999 WWC ’07 Women’s World Cup 2007 Introduction From A Game for Rough Girls to A Beautiful Game Dusting the Mirror of Women’s Football When the 2007 World Cup was allocated to PR China, the country which had staged the fi rst offi cial competition for female players in 1991, the president of the interna- tional governing body of football, Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter, remarked that women’s football was ‘returning to its roots’.1 The Asian philosophy of revisiting, of continually ‘dusting the mirror’, informed this investigation into the international status of women’s football. While the transnational themes are mainly new, it has also been an opportunity to review some ideas previously discussed in A Game for Rough Girls, particularly with regard to the female game’s sometimes controversial image. Reappraising the topic with a broader focus, the study develops the thesis of women’s involvement as fundamental to the history of association football at the same time as acknowledging localized and globalized tensions in its progress. If China is offi cially recognized by FIFA as the ‘cradle’ of football, then it seems appropriate perhaps that it should stage the fi fth competition, when the Women’s World Cup, as one commentator put it, ‘comes home’.2 This periodization is to be resisted. When women players of the late nine- teenth century and the early decades of the twentieth took to the football fi elds in each of the four case study countries covered here (the United States, PR China, England, Australia), they were self-consciously challenging the paradigm of the association code as a ‘manly’ game. Roughly between the 1890s and the mid-1920s, the strategy was to lobby and seek space in the social milieu; then, until the late 1950s, it became to protest exclusion of various kinds, after which time women’s associations formed and the sports authorities challenged before a process of merger and integration in the 1990s.