Hear the story of a footballing legend with a "kick like a mule!"
Hear the story of a footballing legend with a "kick like a mule!"
Lily Parr - Transcript
It was Boxing Day 1920 and the Goodison Park football stadium, was alive with excitement. Thousands had turned up to see one of the most hotly anticipated matches of the year.
The Dick, Kerr team were scheduled to play their rivals St Helen’s and sixty seven thousand people had flocked to the ground, desperate to support their teams and enjoy the skill and agility of their favourite players.
When the ground reached its capacity of 53,000, the rest were turned away, but those with a lucky ticket were not to be disappointed. After an exhilarating 90 minutes the Dick, Kerrs won 4 - 0 and the roar from the crowd was deafening.
But this was not a match played by men. These were the elite players of women’s football and though they didn’t know it then this day was to mark the pinnacle of the women’s game for a long time to come.
Only the following year their dream of a well funded and well supported women’s game would lie trampled underfoot, forced to lie dormant for another 50 years, before it could slowly start to emerge again.
Today we hear the story of the sporting superstar of the day, Lily Parr, a football legend with a kick like a mule…
Lily Parr was born into a large and loving working class family in 1905 in St Helens, which is now a part of Merseyside. She was the fourth of eight children and as a young girl learned to play football from her older brothers and was equally adept at rugby.
The kids would all play in the streets and on local wastelands and on realising the strength of her left foot, Lily would spend hours perfecting her power kick.
It became apparent that she was able to score from anywhere on a football pitch and in rugby her penalty kick and drop goals were unsurpassed.
She was a natural sportswoman. Added to this she would grow to be nearly six foot tall, a powerhouse with jet black hair and a determined glint in her eye, who had no intention of being held back because she was female. She was her own person and was going to do things her way.
Women’s football had long been controversial. It’s history can be traced back to Tudor times and it is said that the world’s first football was owned by Mary Queen of Scots, who had a keen interest in the sport.
In the 1880s the game became popular in Scotland and in 1881 a match was held in Glasgow between a Scottish team and their English opponents. Five thousand spectators flocked to the match, but it had to be abandoned when hundreds of men ran on to the pitch in violent protest and the police were called in. Fortunately the players were able to escape the scene in a horsedrawn bus.
Women’s football was said to be a ‘novelty’ “unfeminine’ and ‘had no place in a man’s game’. Medical professionals called on the game to be banned.
This didn’t stop Lady Florence Dixie forming the British Ladies Football Club in 1894 to be managed by the aptly named Nettie Honeyball. They claimed that this was “a manly game which could be womanly as well” and the first match was attended by 12,000 spectators.
In 1914 when Lily was just nine years old, World War One broke out and Britain’s young men were soon over in France and Belgium fighting in the trenches. At home there was now a shortage of workers and this meant that women were needed.
New opportunities abounded in the munitions factories across the country and up to 1 million women were employed as munitionettes. This was dangerous and dirty work, which included filling shells with explosives by hand, a process which could turn the skin yellow and resulted in the women being known as canaries.
Work was hard, with 12 hour days, 6 days a week and the women were paid half a normal man’s wages, but it was also exciting. The women were in it together and often living together, away from home. Most of all they were contributing, providing vital work for the war effort
Before long, like the men who had gone before them, women started to kick a ball around. Football became popular amongst the women and it was seen as a release for them and would keep them entertained. Soon each munitions factory had their own team, around 150 of them in total.
Back in St Helens Lily, by now 14 years of age and a nimble left-footed winger, started to play for her local team. She towered above her team mates and Barbara Jacobs in her biography of the Dick Kerr Ladies said she was “hauntingly beautiful in a sullen dark way, just out of school - if she ever bothered to go”.
She was also well known for her foul mouth and a penchant for woodbines. These were cheap, strong, unfiltered cigarettes, sometimes known as “gaspers”, due to the fact that those new to smoking found their harsh smoke difficult to inhale.
Lily could often be seen dragging on a woodbine shortly before a match, snuffing it out as she ran onto the pitch to take down her opponents. Jacobs also suggests that Lily was somewhat light fingered, taking her chances to pocket anything lying around.
At only her second game for St Helen’s, she was spotted by the opposing team’s manager Alfred Frankland. He was a manager at the Dick, Kerr factory in Preston and was impressed by her power and speed. He was determined to have her on his team and, after some initial resistance from Lily’s mother, she was persuaded to join him and moved to Preston to play for the Dick, Kerr Ladies and work at the factory.
In Preston Lily was given her own room where she would enjoy smoking her woodbines in bed. It was in fact said that she insisted on being provided with woodbines, as part of her playing terms.
Her playing went from strength to strength. In her first season Lily scored 43 goals. “She had a kick like a mule” teammate Joan Whalley recalled “She was the only person I knew who could lift a dead ball, the old heavy leather ball, from the left wing over to me on the right and nearly knock me out with the force of the shot.”
It was said that she had a harder shot than any male player in living memory and that she would have walked into any male team, if allowed.
On one occasion a condescending male goalkeeper approached Lily during one of her games and, not believing her capable, challenged her to score a ball past him from the penalty spot. She accepted and the irony was that though he saved the goal, Parr’s kick was so powerful that the football broke the man’s arm and the disgruntled and chastened individual was taken off to hospital.
The team, with their colours of black and white, were pioneers in the game of football, not only achieving phenomenal success, but becoming the first ladies team to play a match in shorts.
Frankland had ambitious plans for the Dick, Kerr Ladies and in 1920 he arranged for the team to play their first game against France, and they became the first women’s team to play an international fixture.
Apparently at dinner in the Dick, Kerr canteen after the match, Lily refused to join in the waltzing, but did end up leading everyone in the Hokey Cokey, cigarette as always in her mouth.
The Dick, Kerr Ladies went on to tour in France where they drew three games and won the final match, but were shocked when they crossed the barren battle scarred fields of the Somme, where so many of their male compatriots had fallen and to see the rows and rows of war graves.
In France they played a game at night by using two surplus searchlights and it was watched by 12,000 spectators.
They also continued to tour in Britain and the proceeds from all the games went to charity, first to wounded servicemen and later to out of work miners. They would go on to raise £175,000 in their career, the equivalent of nearly £10 million today.
They became celebrities thanks to the Pathé newsreels which were shown in cinemas and with their success at its height they played the 1920 Boxing Day Match which has gone down in history. Gate receipts at that match were the equivalent of half a million in today’s money.
The path women’s football might have taken at this point can only be imagined, if the funding and support had been allowed to continue. But it wasn't to be…
Instead women’s football and Lily’s career were to be snuffed out, like one of her woodbines underfoot, as she ran on to the pitch.
By 1921 the team were playing up to three games a week whilst working at the factory or alongside study. But their success had begun to attract hostile attention. With the men’s game suspended during the war, the women’s game had been a welcome distraction for those men either unable to fight, wounded or on service leave.
But the war was now over and with 2 million British men discharged from the army, in 1919 the men’s football league had restarted.
Lack of jobs when the men returned was causing riots and the government was concerned that unemployment amongst these demobilised servicemen would cause unrest.
Much anger was directed at women who they felt had taken their jobs in the factories and the feeling was that they should return to their role as homemaker. The old order needed to be re-established.
More than 1.5 million women had joined the workforce during the war and for them this was a devastating blow. They either returned to work that was seen as appropriate for women such as laundry, dressmaking or domestic service or they went back home. Even roles such as teaching and the Civil Service introduced marriage bars which required women to leave their jobs as soon as they were married.
The concerns filtered through into women’s football with rumours abounding that women players were becoming obsessive. An article which appeared in the weekly magazine “Football Special and Sporting Pictorial” warned that the female player “thinks she is being noble and all that sort of thing when she gives up her other pleasures for football, but as a matter of fact she is being nothing of the kind - she is simply being short-sighted and selfish.”
The players were accused of being unwomanly and immodest and the wheels were in motion that would soon see their hopes crushed for good.
Their were also suspicions in the Football Association about how the charity money they raised was being spent. Perhaps these women couldn't be trusted to run their own books? Was corruption taking place? Was football a sensible game for a woman with her more delicate frame? Could it harm her reproductive purpose?
On the 5th December the blow came. An announcement from the Football Association read as follows:
"Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, the Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.
Complaints have also been made as to the conditions under which some of these matches have been arranged and played, and the appropriation of receipts to other than charitable objects.
The Council are further of the opinion that an excessive proportion of the receipts are absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charitable objects.
For these reasons the Council request clubs belonging to the association to refuse the use of their grounds for such matches".
And so the women were banned from playing on any professional pitch in Britain and referees and other officials were not allowed to assist in their games.
To imagine how seismic this decision was we might want to bring our mind to today and look at the success the Lionesses, our National women’s football team has achieved today. And also to consider how the game has grown in popularity in recent years for young women and for girls in schools.
Imagine then if our government was to turn round tomorrow and ban all women’s football on any professional pitch. It gives you an idea of how devastating a moment it must have been, as a whole generation of young sporting hopefuls had their dreams dashed, in one fell swoop.
Alfred Frankland insisted that the Dick, Kerr Ladies play on “even if we have to play on ploughed fields,” but at the age of only 16 years old Lily’s semi-professional football career was over.
Despite this the team continued to tour, though in Canada they found that women’s football had also been banned their and half of their matches were cancelled.
Then on a trip to the United States, they found they had been lined up to play against men’s teams. They played to crowds of up to 10,000 and won four out of the nine matches with Lily scoring many of their goals.
The sport limped on for several years, but then a new rule which stipulated that players could not join a side more than 15 miles from their home town, broke up the Dick, Kerr squad.
In 1926 the Dick Kerr Factory was taken over by English Electric and along with many others Lily lost her job.
The football team were renamed Preston Ladies and Lily remained with them until she retired from football in 1950 aged 45 having scored one last time in a 11-1 thrashing of Scotland. It is believed she scored almost 1000 goals and missed only 5 matches in her whole career.
After she left Dick, Kerr’s, Lily went to work as a nurse at the Whittingham Hospital nearby. Here she had the good fortune to meet Mary, the love of her life. When they set up home together, Lily became the first person in her family to own a house and what was unusual at the time was their willingness to live in an openly gay relationship.
Unlike male homosexuality, lesbianism was never illegal in England. A move to pass legislation was attempted in 1921, but was rejected for fear that any attention would encourage women to explore their homosexuality.
At a time when people were still persecuted for their sexuality Lily and Mary had the courage to live openly as a gay couple.
The Legacy of Lily Parr is profound and every young player today should know about her. She is undoubtedly a role model; a woman who refused to adhere to a stereotype and who played football and lived life in her own way. She apologised to no-one and was a champion of LGBT rights, long before society recognised them.
The 1921 ban was a huge blow to Lily and the team, but for another 30 years she continued to play football in an attempt to prove that the FA had been wrong. Thankfully she lived to see the ban on women’s teams using their grounds and pitches, overturned in 1971. She died from breast cancer in 1978.
Above all Lily was instrumental in changing peoples perception of the women’s game and in 2002 she became the first ever woman to be inducted into the National Football Museum’s Football Hall of Fame joining the likes of Sir Stanley Matthews, Jimmy Greaves, Alan Shearer.
A further tribute was paid to her when a life-size statue of her was unveiled outside the museum in June 2019.
And in Regents Park the semi-annual Lily Parr Football Tournament takes place, run by the London Lesbian Kickabouts in order to celebrate women's football and remember something that we now take for granted, that women’s football was not always so easy to play.
The attendance record of 53,000 set by that 1920 Boxing Day Match at Goodeson Park was a record which would remain unbroken until 2012 when 83,000 spectators gathered in Wembley Stadium to watch the Olympics final between the USA and Japan’s women’s teams.
And today as women’s football grows from strength to strength, spare a thought for Lily Parr and her team and for the generations of lost women players who never had the chance to dream, to play, and to shine in the beautiful game.