The SeaCity Museum, found in the strikingly designed Grade II listed building on Havelock Road in the heart of Southampton, is hosting a modest exhibition of artefacts celebrating “women trailblazers” in football.
It’s part of Southampton’s role as a Euro 2022 host city, a city that has plenty to celebrate after producing a rich crop of female footballers in the 1970s and ’80s, many who went on to play for England.
In one of the display cabinets is the original handmade replica cap given to Sue Buckett, England’s goalkeeper and one of five Southampton Women’s FC footballers who played in the inaugural official England women’s fixture against Scotland in 1972.
Buckett and her trailblazing team-mates were given one roughly the same shape as the men received, a little darker than the original, with “Scotland 1972” stitched thinly on the brim. And that, sadly, is all they ever got.
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That the 1972 players had a cap at all is down to the industriousness of one woman. Flo Bilton, who died in 2004, was an officer at the Women’s Football Association from when it opened in 1969 until the FA finally took women’s football under its umbrella 24 years later.
“The early history of the WFA was littered with tales of penny-pinching,” reads a passage in Football Nation: Sixty Years of the Beautiful Game. “There was never much money, very little sponsorship, and WFA funds stood at just over £76 in August 1970. International players received only one cap each, and that was painstakingly sewed together by Flo Bilton, who had borrowed a prototype England men’s cap from Raich Carter, a near neighbour in Hull.”
After winning three or four of them, the players stopped receiving them, because it became too much work for Bilton. And just as they had to pay for their own travel to play for England, they had to pay for the caps, too. So instead, upon retirement they were given a shield with smaller decorative shields marking each of their England appearances.
For all the Football Association’s platitudes about celebrating the trailblazers of women’s football, about ensuring their stories are not forgotten and remembering those who strode before, how can it be that they have still not given the 1972 players the one thing they are due and, judging from the reactions of those I have spoken to, would warmly welcome.
The England cap has always been a savoured tradition in English football and remains so to this day. “A profound privilege” was how Gareth Southgate described it.
They have always been awarded to the men for every appearance and while some players compile over a hundred of them, former West Ham defender Jim Barrett got one for the only four minutes he ever played for England against Northern Ireland in 1928. And the 1972 players are not particularly happy about it.
When I contacted the FA to check that the women who had played in that first official England game really hadn’t been given an official cap 50 years later, the organisation responded by pointing to a 50th anniversary event in November 2022, explaining that the FA is working on a project to recognise and celebrate all former internationals.
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The email included a link to a page on the FA website about The Heritage programme “recognising 141 years of women’s football”. I presumed that perhaps the caps would be awarded then – half-a-century too late, but at least these women, mostly well into their 70s, would finally get the recognition they deserve as true legends of the English women’s game.
But still there was no mention of it. When I pressed the FA on this, the organisation had nothing further to add.
As part of The Heritage, the National Lottery is providing half-a-million in funding to help “record the hidden history of women’s football and launch a celebration of the game, its players, and communities.
“For the very first time, information about every England player, captain, goalscorer and match score since 1972 will be researched, recorded and shared alongside the information that already exists about men’s football.”
As part of the celebration, exhibitions – such as the one in Southampton – have been set up in the nine cities hosting Euro 2022. But while exhibitions are lovely, they’re not quite as tangible nor carry as much meaning as an official England cap, or even tickets to an England game.
Indeed some former England players of the 1970s and ’80s who made 30 to 40 England appearances, at a time when the women’s team played at best a handful of games a year, are unhappy they didn’t even receive an invite to attend England’s games at Euro 2022.
Many of those players live in Southampton, they have not lost the fire in the belly and still meet to play walking football together now, and are a little peeved that even though Friday’s game against Northern Ireland is on their doorstep, at St Mary’s stadium, they weren’t considered.
Everyone makes mistakes, of course. I suspect the men in charge of the FA in 1972 were still reeling from the fact they were forced to lift the ban on women playing football.
But mistakes can be corrected. In 2019, the Scottish FA finally made official caps which were handed to their overlooked 1972 players by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Will the English FA see sense and finally rectify its own?
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