Looking back: women's football

In partnership with

The Guardian

·18 August 2025

Looking back: women's football

25 March 1895

The ladies’ football match: Crouch End Athletic Ground hosts a match between North and South teams of women footballers.

16 October 1968

Women footballers fight for ‘respectability’.

OneFootball Videos

11 November 1969

FA to think again about women footballers.

First ‘foul’ lady

28 July 1971by Dennis Barker

It was the sort of situation in which even the Archangel Gabriel might have said “Blow it!” The rules of the football tournament said that if the scores were equal, the result would be decided on corners. With the score nil-nil, the corners one-all and only five minutes to go, the goalie fielded the ball near the byline and the referee awarded a corner to the other side.

“The ball didn’t go over the bloody line, Ref!” said the goalie, Eileen Bourne, aged 20, of the Brighton Post Office Ladies Football Team who, on the spot, became the first lady footballer in Sussex to be sent off for swearing at a referee.

Last night, she was said to be still “too upset” to talk about the incident, but the referee, Mr Charles Adams, a builder, said firmly: “I don’t stand swearing from anybody, male or female. Once a referee lets someone swear at him he loses control of the game.” The biggest concession Mr Adams was prepared to make was a promise not to report the matter. “The sending off was sufficient punishment,” he said.

28 May 1978

The state of women’s football in 1978: ‘the manager of one teamI played for dated all the girls, then when he was fed up with us, he left’.

19 March 2000

Women’s football to turn pro: The FA will use its muscle to put the UK’s fastest growing sport in the public eye by ensuring that broadcasters screen games.

28 July 2001

Women’s football is fastest growing sport.

4 December 2003

Whistle while you work: the obstacles facing the growing number of female referees.

6 February 2004

Is sex appeal the way to sell women’s football? First Fifa suggested hotpants. Now the FA is sending out glossy brochures of the England team all dolled up.