COPA71 'Lost Lionesses' Return to Mexico City After 55 Years

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Henry Bonsu for Times Radio. 

Transcript

Henry Bonsu 0:00

Off to Latin America now and the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, where England's Lost Lionesses, the forerunners of today's European champions, have returned this week for the first time in 55 years. Now in August 1971, in sweltering heat, the Lost Lionesses played in front of 90,000 fans, only to return home to zero acclaim. It was only in 1971 that the FA had lifted a ban that barred female players from all its grounds and facilities. Latin America correspondent Jon Bonfiglio has been speaking to some of the Lionesses about their experience of 55 years ago, including Trudy McCaffrey.

Trudy McCaffrey 0:33

We didn't do any media. I mean there was no publicity, nobody really wanted to know in England. So I mean when we got here, um we got off the plane, it was absolutely huge. You know, I mean Chris actually got off the plane and so yeah, all all this flashlights there must be somebody really famous on the plane, and we had no idea that people were there for us.

Chris Lockwood 0:53

That's how naive it we were. It was we didn't have a clue we were gonna play in the Azteca. Um we'd only I think played in parks because in our country the FA wouldn't let us play on their pictures. Um but we loved the game so much, so much. I can't we all remember the how much we loved it. Well we still do, but we can't play that well now, uh, of course. But it was important to us in our lives always.

Henry Bonsu 1:26

That was Trudy McCaffrey and Chris Lockwood. Well, let's uh talk to Jon Bonfiglio, who's with us, and can tell us more about this historic return. Jon, hello. Hi, can you can you set the scene? Tell tell us about this this return because I remember seeing a documentary uh by Claire Balding, uh broadcaster here, of course, uh did a big one on Channel 4 called When Um Football Banned Women, I think it was called, 2017. And um, I mean that was the first time I'd heard of anything to do with uh women being banned and then being at a really, really high level and playing in front of huge uh crowds back in the 1920s and 30s, uh in between the wars. And then of course, um it was they were banned for 50 or so years. To tell us about this return.

Jon Bonfiglio 2:08

Yeah, you you you're absolutely right. One of the staggering things about this story is the fact that it's not told at all. It's been deliberately sidelined. FIFA still today, when they talk about women's football, they say it's basically only just begun in the last two or three decades. They they completely gloss over the fact that many countries had fully functioning, highly successful professional leagues in the first half of the of the last century, which were then taken down uh because they were perceived to be a threat to men's uh football. And the spurious argument was used that um that football was uh was damaging to women's bodies, in particular as regards fertility. So in the UK, the ban was 1921 to 19 71. It was lifted just before the tournament, but this was a fully international landscape, and actually many countries took their lead from the FA ban. And in the summer of 1971, just after the uh the ban, this figure called Harry Batt, a um a fairly visionary um sort of football coach uh from the north of England, decided he sort of had the belief that uh that he could pull a team together, an unofficial team of England women together, and take them across um to Mexico, which remarkably he did. Many of the women were really young, some were as young as as 15, and they none of them knew what it was that they were getting into. And over at this end, it was absolutely the perfect storm of um of sort of of interest because um uh that there was it uh I mean, partly because of course it's football and it's Mexico, and there's just uh it doesn't matter who's playing it, there's a there's sort of a fever around it. But at the same time, um one of the uh the sort of the magnates who who ran one of the big TV channels, uh TV Azteca, also owned the Azteca Stadium, and they saw a niche opportunity to actually be able to um to bring everything together, both the football and the stadia, fill fill them, but in order to fill them, they had to um put massive amounts of marketing behind it. So these women, in in what were their first matches in any kind of stadia, played in front of nine ninety thousand, a hundred thousand people. The final is still the most watched, the most attended um uh professional football match um still in women's sport.

Henry Bonsu 4:16

Wow, I didn't know that. Well, so what was it like uh meeting Trudy and Chris? I mean, what kind of emotions were on show? Because obviously, if it's 55 years since you were last there, it must have been quite powerful.

Jon Bonfiglio 4:26

Uh really powerful, and not just powerful because they because of their return to Mexico and their return to the Azteca, which they hadn't been back to, but also because it's really important to remember and contextualize that when these women went back to the UK, it wasn't just that there was zero acclaim, they were deliberately sidelined. And one of the things that which was which I found staggering about speaking to Chris and Trudy was how they said that they were forced to feel a deep shame as to what they had done in Mexico in 1971, and they never spoke about it. There were people that they worked with for decades who never knew that this had taken place, they didn't speak about um about it amongst family and friends, and remarkably, would you believe none of the players ever saw each other again until just a few a few years ago. So almost 50 years went by where they didn't even speak to each other.

Henry Bonsu 5:12

Life maybe got in the way. Who knows, Jon? Wow. And then let's talk about the Azteca Stadium because I mean it is iconic, isn't it? Because I think it's the only stadium where um I think both Maradona and Pele have um lifted the World Cup. I think Pele in 1970, Maradona in 1986, that's right, isn't it? And of course it's going to be the showpiece for the first game of FIFA 2026, isn't it? If um the fears about violence, and of course we've seen a lot of that in Mexico this week, can be allayed.

Jon Bonfiglio 5:41

Yeah, I I think realistically the fears about violence are more related to Guadalajara and the presence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel there. Mexico City has undergone a transformation in the last 20, 25 years and is as safe a space as you could uh you could hope for, uh, certainly in in Mexico, but in many other places as well. You you're right to say, Henry, there is, I mean, you could probably count the sort of the iconic, sort of top five iconic stadiums of the of the world, and one of those would be the Azteca Stadium. It comes up out of nowhere in the south of of Mexico City. It's just a huge building. It's just in the process of being re uh refurbished, and it is going to be uh the the showpiece event for the opening of the World Cup and the first match between Mexico and South Africa in not that many weeks' time.

Henry Bonsu 6:26

Indeed. Jon Bonfiglio, Latin America correspondent. Thank you very much indeed for being with us on Times Radio.