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Women's football started with sell-out crowds, only to be banned across the world. The sport finally found its feet 50 years later, after some desperately dark days.
"What are the red flags for?" asked a big, strapping girl attired in a bathing costume, white shoes and stockings, and gold armlets at Wentworth Oval.
"They are the goals, silly," said another girl, not quite so big but similarly attired.
One night last week, the Sydney Ladies' Soccer Club held its first try-out with the ball, and a varied assortment of styles in femininity and fashion turned up with enthusiasm.
After half an hour on the field, they learned to kick the ball in something like the way that it should be kicked – a few stubbed toes soon taught the lesson.
There were tall and hefty girls, short and wiry girls, and girls betwixt and between. Mostly they were in bathing costumes, and as it was rather a chilly night, the new footballers would have been glad to play even chasings in order to keep warm.
A few girls wore shorts and shirts, and one affected a smart black bow-tie at the collar of her silk shirt. A few woollen jumpers were worn on top of bloomers, and handkerchiefs or bathing caps kept troublesome tresses within bounds.
The railings became wardrobes, and here and there a coat or a mackintosh or a fur coat was hooked on top of the fence."
This is the opening of a news story titled "LADIES PLAY FOOTBALL" in The Ballarat Star from July 12, 1921, which describes one of the first ever trials organised for women to play soccer in Australia.
The writer sent to cover this unusual event seems entranced – not by the game that unfolds in front of him, but rather by the women playing it.
They are all different shapes and sizes and ages, wearing an array of unsuitable outfits for the occasion.
"It would seem that the girls nowadays are not possessed of good, stout shoes," he writes, noting that many wore "light shoes with Louis heels" that broke apart in the mud, only to be hammered back together with nails during a break.
"The girls were eagerness itself and while waiting for sides to be picked, some jazzed it over the oval, some turned Catherine wheels, some walked on their hands. The ground was wet and the girls who turned somersaults soon looked as if they had been in a rugby scrum."
He describes "the eternal chewing" of gum, the giggles and shrieks, the kicks and spills and splats: the absolute, unbridled joy these women got simply from running around on a football field, playing a game that they never knew could be theirs.
Ten days before this trial, more than 30 women showed up to a meeting held by the Metropolitan Football Association – an organisation that focused entirely on the men's game – to consider whether to form a women's association in Sydney.
Some of the attendees had played abroad in places like Canada, New Zealand, and Great Britain, and were bothered by the lack of opportunities in Australia. So here they gathered, in a local hall, drawn together by their shared passion for the game, wanting to help it grow.
Similar meetings had been occurring all over the eastern states of Australia part-way through 1921 with women's teams popping up in suburbs like Balgownie, Woonona, Toowoomba, Paddington, and Brisbane.
One of these meetings was particularly important.
On the 8th of July 1921, more than 100 women gathered at the Brisbane Gymnasium with representatives of the all-men's Queensland Football Association, where one Mr. William Betts explained that "there was a determined move on the part of the ladies to play football in Queensland, and it was considered that of all the codes open to them, soccer was the most suitable."
It was decided, then and there, that a Queensland Ladies' Soccer Association (QLSA) would be formed – the first official women's football organisation in the country – which would require several new teams based on the number of interested women in the room.
The QLSA would be chaired by Mr. R.J. Powell, an early women's football ally who had helped found the Latrobe Ladies' Soccer Club in Queensland earlier that year.
Naturally, as The Ballarat Star article highlights, the first order of business was deciding exactly what the players would wear.
"The chairman said there would be no difficulty about a costume," a news report of the meeting reads.
"The Latrobe Club had decided upon jerseys, bloomers – (laughter) – with straps over the shoulders to hold them up – (laughter) – and three-quarter hose. Stockings worn over the knees would prove too expensive, for a girl who fell might tear them. (Laughter).
"A Voice: What about ladders? (Laughter.)
"It was agreed that football boots of boys' sizes would not be too large."
Not only did this meeting formalise the first women's association, it was also the place where the idea to host the first official women's game was first floated, with Betts selected as the first coach.
"Two clubs to represent North Brisbane and South Brisbane were formed in the room after the meeting, and it was decided to apply to the Q.F.A. for permission to play a match – preferably Brisbane v Toowoomba – as a "curtain-raiser" to the final tie of the Brisbane Charity Cup about the end of August."
And so history began.
The Gabba Game
The story of women's football is a story of struggle and perseverance: a classic hero's quest in which the game has faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but through creativity, belief, and dogged determination, overcome them all.
Its history can be traced through a series of small moments; pivot-points from which the game spun off in one direction instead of another.
Two months after that meeting, two women's teams walked out onto the Brisbane Cricket Ground in front of 10,000 people.
North Brisbane, dressed in thick, oversized cotton jerseys and dark red bloomers, opened the scoring in the first 30-minute half through a player known simply as "H. Breeze."
Then, in the second half, 16-year-old Jean Campbell — the captain of the Reds — poked a penalty kick past the South Brisbane goalkeeper, dressed in scratchy navy blue.
The crowd erupted, chanting the teenager's name: "Campbell! Campbell! Campbell!"
Minutes later, the referee blew the full-time whistle. The game finished 2-0 to North Brisbane, and that day – September 24, 1921 – went down in history as the first official game of women's football in Australia.
Historian Fiona Crawford, co-author of Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women's Football, said the Gabba Game was a critical moment.
"This first game was so crucial because it was the first time we actually saw women playing football on a proper professional stage," Ms Crawford told ABC Sport.
"It was also the first time that women's football was documented.
"It was probably not a big deal to the men – and it would have been men – who were documenting it on the day. It was probably a bit of a curiosity, and they probably would've moved onto another story the very next day.
"It sat in dusty archives of the library for a long time as a footnote. But, 100 years on, my co-author Lee McGowan was able to pull it out, find out a bit more information, and really anchor that point where women's football started in Australia in 1921."
The flourishing interest in women's football in Australia was paralleled by a growing enthusiasm for it in Great Britain.
In the article about the formation of the QLSA, the journalist notes that "in England about 45,000 persons recently attended a match which lady Soccer footballers played for charitable purposes," referring to the famous Dick, Kerr Ladies team that regularly attracted sell-out crowds to their charity games.
They embarked on international tours and were covered by the mainstream press.
One of their players, Lily Parr, became a national celebrity. The team single-handedly raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to support unemployed and disabled ex-servicemen who had returned from the battlefields of World War I.
On Boxing Day of 1920, 53,000 people squeezed into the historic Goodison Park in Liverpool to watch them take on St Helens Ladies.
10,000 more spectators supposedly waited outside the gates, hoping there was room to spare. Not even men's games were attracting those sorts of numbers.
It was clear, even then, that women's football was something special.
But not everybody saw it that way.
The ban
Instead of seeing this blossoming area of the game as an opportunity for growth and investment, the English Football Association – as well as the wider political establishment – saw women's football as a threat.
It was something they had no control over: not the fixtures, the ticket sales, the revenue, the crowds. And certainly not the women at the heart of it all.
And so, in December of 1921, the FA did the only thing they could to reclaim the game they believed was theirs – and theirs alone.
They banned women from playing on association pitches altogether.
"Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, Council felt impelled to express the strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged," the FA's famous ruling read.
The ban slowly fanned across the world, consuming the women's game like a shadow.
Some countries such as Brazil, Germany, and Spain banned women outright from the game.
Other countries like Australia simply refused to provide the resources, facilities, and opportunities for women to play, which ultimately had the same effect.
This 'shadow ban' in Australia would last for 50 years.
An entire generation of women lost to the game.
1930s
Some though, persevered. They carried on playing in the shadows.
1940s
During World War II, major factories in England would organise teams for their working women in order to raise money and morale for the war effort, but official clubs and sanctioned games continued to dwindle as a result of the ban.
1950s
In 1957, a pilot Women's European Championship was organised in Berlin by the International Ladies Football Association (ILFA), despite the fact that women's football was officially forbidden by the German federation.
1960s
Matches were played sporadically throughout the 1960s, with the ILFA holding another European tournament in Italy in 1969.
But visual and written records of these moments were few and far between.
Despite 40 years of technological advancement, including rapid improvements to cameras, women's football was still not seen worthy of documentation.
All we have are these small snatches of the past.
1970s
But five decades later, everything changed.
In July of 1971, England's FA lifted the ban that had kept women's football in the darkness.
This symbolic moment flooded across the world, with governing bodies gradually allowing women to play again.
Women's football saw the formation of its first national teams and international competitions, like the 1971 Women's Invitational Tournament in Mexico, where tens of thousands of spectators crammed into major stadiums to watch women play the game.
Slowly, women's football crept out from the shadows ...
and back into the light.
Then came a new dawn.
A new beginning
Despite all the bans and taboos, the exclusions and silence, women's football survived.
It was kept alive by the very same women who turned up to those town hall meetings in the early 20th century: those who knew, deep in their bones, that football was too special to let slip away into darkness.
They were women like Elaine Watson, a pioneer administrator who began her career as a team manager in 1964.
She became the foundation president of the new Queensland Women's Association in 1975, and later served as the head of the Australian Women's Soccer Association throughout the 1980s.
They were women like Pat O'Connor, an English migrant who helped set up the famous St. George Budapest women's team in Sydney in 1971.
They went undefeated for ten years, and their players formed the core of the first side to represent Australia overseas when they competed at the inaugural Women's Asian Cup in 1975.
They were women like Julie Dolan, the captain of the first Australian women's national team to compete in an "A" international, which took place on October 6, 1979 against New Zealand at Seymour Shaw Park in southern Sydney, and after whom the A-League Women's most important individual award – the Julie Dolan medal – is named.
They were women like Heather Reid, who was a founding member of the ACT Women's Association in 1979 before joining Watson on the AWSA board in the mid-1980s, helping them advocate for both an official FIFA-run Women's World Cup and admission to the Olympic Games.
She was the first woman appointed as CEO of a state football federation when she took over Capital Football in 2004.
They were women like Moya Dodd, a vice-captain of Australia who competed in the first match of the pilot Women's World Cup in China in 1988.
She went on to become one of the most powerful administrators in women's football, joining the boards of Football Australia and the Asian Football Confederation, and in 2013 became the first woman ever to sit on the executive committee of FIFA.
It was – and is – their collective effort over several decades that has ensured women's football did not return to the shadows that threatened to swallow it whole.
"Some of those early pioneers that we should know more about are all the people behind the scenes, as well as those that were on the field at the time," Dolan told ABC.
"Without their efforts, we never would have got on the park.
"They weren't paid employees. They were contributing to the game because they loved the game. And like the players, there was no fame, there was no fortune. What you had was passion for the game.
"We're talking about people like Pat O'Connor, Elaine Watson: very instrumental in the beginning of the Matildas and national teams.
"We shouldn't forget all those people in the background who, despite receiving no support at all, their level of professionalism wasn't compromised. They gave everything."
And yet, while 50 years had passed since the 1921 ban, to these women in the game, it felt like very little had changed. In many ways, football still did not feel like theirs.
They still struggled to access equipment, coaching, change-rooms, and playing fields.
They still lacked financial support, often having to pay for the privilege of representing Australia overseas.
They still lacked publicity, needing to organise their own raffles and fundraisers or publish nude calendars to attract mainstream media attention.
They even lacked their own name: throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the women's national team was referred to as the "Soccerettes" or the "Lady Socceroos," as though they were simply derivatives of the men's side and not their own team with their own history, culture, and identity.
At the start of this new dawn for the game, the idea of being a professional footballer was a distant dream.
After the ban was lifted in 1971, it would take another 50 years for the dreams of these women of the past to become a reality for women in the future.
No going back
Just over a century after those plucky groups of women gathered in meeting rooms and community halls around Australia demanding basic access to the sport they loved, the biggest women's football tournament of all, the Women's World Cup, is now on our doorstep.
Over one million tickets have been sold across Australia and New Zealand, with billions more expected to watch from around the globe.
32 nations will compete in the tournament for the very first time, each of them representing the histories and legacies – the struggle and the sacrifices – of the generations of women who came before them.
Not just those nations who were there in the early days: England, Brazil, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Denmark, Germany, USA.
But also those who are only just arriving: Morocco, Portugal, Zambia, Vietnam, Panama, Haiti, the Philippines, Republic of Ireland.
More women players are full-time professionals than ever before, including every Australian national team member. Australia's top-flight competition, the A-League Women, continues to grow, with the next few years promising more teams, more games, and more opportunities for women on and off the pitch.
Each player at this year's tournament will be paid a minimum sum by FIFA, bypassing the administrative quagmire of still-apathetic national federations, while the overall prize money for teams continues to grow. By 2027, prize money for the men's and women's tournaments will be equal.
For the first time, women's teams have been given the same conditions, resources, and access to facilities that men's teams have received for decades, finally making up ground on the handicaps women have had to deal with for the past century.
The faces of women footballers are plastered on billboards and shopfronts and magazine covers and television shows, connecting their fights in football to the fights of women striving for equality everywhere.
Kicking off the tournament in Australia tonight will be the Matildas, now one of the country's most recognisable and most loved sports teams; their famous "never say die" motto embodying the rebellious spirit that has kept the women's game alive.
They will be led by captain Sam Kerr, who has become one of the greatest athletes in the sport, cheered on by adoring fans with her name emblazoned across their shoulders and plastered on posters waved from the stands.
And when they walk out of the shadow of the tunnel into the bright lights of Stadium Australia, in front of the same sell-out crowd that women's football attracted 100 years ago, they will do so knowing one thing: that this game has always, and will always, be theirs.
Credits
Words: Samantha Lewis
Photographs: National Library of Australia, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Football Queensland, Getty Images, City of Sydney Archive
Editing and production: Johanna McDiarmid, Kyle Pollard