The rise and rise of women’s football

In recent times, women’s football has cemented its reputation as one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK, but its history goes back much further than you might expect.

On an unusually warm, yet rainy Boxing Day in 1920, the famous Preston side of legendary coach Dick Kerr beat St Helens Ladies 4-0 in front of 53,000 spectators at Everton’s Goodison Park, with thousands more locked outside.

Whilst not the first recorded women’s game, it was a match that showed just how popular this alternative version of the game had become, and offered a marker to its future popularity.

Yet the Football Asso ciation wasn’t a supporter of the game, and ladies’ matches were soon banned from club grounds. The FA said football was “quite unsuitable for females”, and such a position would stick un til the 1970s approached as the Women’s Football Association, formed in 1969, began a long road to attempting to restore parity.

Southampton beat Stewarton and Thistle 4-1 in the first Women’s FA Cup Final in 1971, and a year later, the first women’s international was played in Greenock, as England saw off Scotland 3-2. In 1984, England reached the inaugural European final, losing 4-3 on penalties to Sweden.

The year 1991 saw the national league of the WFA commence, and in 1993 the Women’s FA Challenge Cup was established, as the WFA was brought under control of the sport’s governing body, with the FA Women’s Premier League coming 12 months after.

When Hope Powell was appointed coach of the England women’s international sides in 1998, it made her the first full-time employee in such a role, and signified the beginning of the women’s game establishing its rank within the sport.

Such growth was happening on a global scale, with the 1999 World Cup in America showcasing sold-out stadiums and a 90,000-capacity crowd in Pasadena to see the hosts lift the title.

The 2005 Euros were played in England, with the Lionesses eliminated in the group stage, but the audiences were still growing.

Just over 115,000 fans flocked to the

15 matches played and 2.9m watched the opening game on BBC TV. Two years later proof arrived that strides had really been made in the English game as its most successful club, Arsenal, won the biggest prize – the UEFA Women’s Cup.

Everton ended the Gunners’ Ladies run of more than 50 games unbeaten when they won the League Cup Final in 2008, although Arsenal regained composure to secure their fifth consecutive Premier League title and the Women’s FA Cup. The following year they won all three trophies.

Team GB reached the last eight at the London 2012 Olympics, losing to Canada, and in 2013 Hope Powell left her role as head coach after 15 years and 162 matches. That same year, the FA, Sport England, The Premier League and the Football League Trust launched their first joint national par- ticipation programme for girls’ football.

England Women then made history by playing their first match at the new Wembley in 2014, with over 45,000 in attendance against Germany, which warmed them up for a third-place finish at the Women’s World Cup, the following summer.

The Lionesses reached the same stage of the Euros in 2017, and at the 2019 World Cup, losing to eventual champions the United States.

The Women’s FA Cup Final in 2019 also set a record for attendance with 43,264 present for Manchester City’s 3-0 win over West Ham.

The 2022 Euros win is just the latest chapter in the phenomenal rise of the women’s game in England, with the success permeating through to grassroots level, with over 3.5million female footballers, of all ages, now regularly playing the game.