If there’s one thing football fans love to do, it’s to argue about their favourites in the context of the best players of all time.
Even with “Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo?!” dominating conversation for the last decade, greats from past eras like Pele and Johan Cruyff will always feature high up such lists. Even though many were not around during Pele’s heyday, there is an understanding that he and Brazil teammate Garrincha were two of the greatest to take to a football pitch. So too, there are fans who may only know Zinedine Zidane as the Real Madrid coach with a penchant for impossibly tight trousers, but there is at least clear footage of the former player doing what he did best with the ball.
So, for some, there is simply the legend around a player’s name, and for others there is at least video of their highlights, but that’s only true in the men’s game. For women’s football — for so long confined to the shadows and one line or two on a result if you were lucky — there is merely misty-eyed memories of those who were around to see the forbearers of the modern game.
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Some in England may know vaguely of Dick, Kerr Ladies FC, who were all but one of the first unofficial England teams. The names Lily Parr or Alice Kell may ring a distant bell, and had it not been for the tireless work of historians like Professor Jean Williams, their legacy would be all but lost. Yet, as never officially recognised by the FA, England’s governing body of football, that once-great team and those who played as employees of the Dick, Kerr & Co. exist in a grey area, a handful of black-and-white photos and century old Pathé newsreel.
The year after Dick, Kerr held the first international game of women’s football against a French team circa 1920, The FA banned women’s football — a ban that remained for the next 50 years, pushing the sport into the shadows and recesses of history. Fans now wearing Lucy Bronze and Alessia Russo shirts aren’t going to think to add Parr and Kell to their list of the greatest female players.
