Women's Game
Women's football drew enormous crowds in England around 1920, the Dick, Kerr Ladies played a floodlit charity match at Deepdale that December, before the FA banned it from member grounds in 1921, a ban that stood for fifty years. This facet follows the game from there to the modern tournaments.
Part of Football
11 moments in this segment.
- - Soccer by searchlight, 1920. British Pathe film of a night match at Deepdale in Preston played under two anti-aircraft searchlights, staged by the Dick, Kerr Ladies to raise money for a fund for unemployed ex-servicemen. It is one of the earliest filmed floodlit football matches, and the crowd it drew shows how popular the women's game had become before the ban.
- - Dick Kerr's Ladies leave for Canada. British Pathe film of the Dick, Kerr Ladies boarding a ship for a North American tour, skipping rope on deck as a crowd watches. Filmed months after the Football Association shut women's teams out of its members' grounds, it shows the side taking its football abroad instead.
- - The Dick, Kerr Ladies. A documentary on the Preston munitions-works team that grew out of the First World War and became the best-known women's side in England, drawing large paying crowds. It traces how the Football Association's 1921 ban on women playing at its members' grounds cut that momentum off.
- - Marta on the ball. A compilation of Marta Vieira da Silva's dribbling and finishing, the Brazilian forward who was named world player of the year five years running from 2006. She is the reference point for the modern women's game and the most decorated individual in it.
- - Why women's football was banned. ITV News on the Football Association's 1921 decision to bar women's teams from grounds belonging to its member clubs, a ban that stood for about fifty years. It came at the height of the game's popularity, when a single women's match had drawn a crowd of more than fifty thousand.
- - Remembering the Dick, Kerr Ladies. Liverpool women's players reflect on the Dick, Kerr Ladies, the Preston side that drew crowds of tens of thousands before the Football Association shut women's teams out of its grounds. It links the modern professional women's game back to the era the ban interrupted.
- - Marta and the Brazilian women's team. An examination of Marta's international career and the lack of investment and support around the Brazil women's team through it. It uses her record to ask what a federation owes the players who carry it.
- - The forgotten history of women's football. A short film on the period when women's matches drew very large crowds in England, and on the Football Association ban of 1921 that cut the game off from affiliated grounds. It connects that decision to how long the sport took to rebuild.
- - Chloe Kelly on how she came to the game. The scorer of the winning goal in the 2022 Women's Euro final talks about growing up playing football and about the environment inside the England squad. It is a first-hand account recorded immediately after the tournament.
- - The Rise of the England Lionesses. A short history of the England women's team, beginning with the Football Association's long ban on women playing on member grounds and following the game's slow re-establishment through to European success and a mass television audience. It shows how much of the modern women's game had to be rebuilt from scratch.
- - Marta, Brazil's Record Forward. A biography of Marta, from her childhood in Brazil to a career in Sweden and the United States and six FIFA World Player of the Year awards. It covers the obstacles she faced in a country where women's football was long neglected, and her influence on the players who followed.
