The Football Association’s plan to award legacy caps to the original 1972 Lionesses and all England players who followed them has been hindered by holes in the governing body’s historical records, i can reveal.
The FA is in the process of compiling a complete legacy list for England’s female footballers, but the task has been complicated due to the governing body not keeping records and documents when it took over the running of women’s football in 1993.
Prior to then, women’s football had been run by the Women’s Football Association, but the FA did not deem it necessary to keep all of the records of female England players of the previous two decades at the time.
For 150 years, each time a male player made their debut for the England team they were given a cap including their name and which number they represent in the ongoing sequence of players to have represented their country.
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The FA has, however, never given official caps to female players. The original Lionesses who played in the first official England game against Scotland in November 1972, after the FA’s 50-year ban on women’s football was lifted, were either given replica caps handmade by Flo Bilton, an officer at the Women’s Football Association, or a white plastic bag to carry their boots.
The FA has now enlisted Jean Williams, a professor in sports history and the author of multiple books on the history of women’s football, to piece together the fractured history of England’s female players and track them all down.
Patricia Gregory, a founding member of the WFA, its only surviving officer and one of the most influential figures in the progression of women’s football, is also working tirelessly and relentlessly on the project.
i passed on the contact details of Jeannie Allott, a winger in the 1972 Lionesses who now lives in the Netherlands, to the FA with her permission. Allott, who made her debut aged 16, recalled how she had to hitchhike from Crewe to London for games and training as they were forced to pay travel costs and once had to spend a night at Waterloo Station.
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“I got in a lorry, a milk cart, anything that was going down to London,” Allott, 66, said. “The things we do for the England team.
“That’s why it’s frustrating. What we went through to get women’s football where it is today. Nothing that happened in the past should be forgotten but the FA forgot us. We want a cap and I believe we deserve an apology.
“We didn’t have equal rights in those days. It was a shame. Some in the FA didn’t agree with ladies football. It was a man’s world.”
Such is the scale of the task piecing together the history of women’s football in England, members of the 1972 Lionesses cannot even remember who scored England’s goals in the 3-2 victory against Scotland in the inaugural game.
Fifa’s records claim that Sylvia Gore, Lynda Hale and Allott were the scorers. Other accounts claim Sylvia Gore scored and Pat Davies struck two. When i tried to clarify with Allott, she said she had been told she scored but could not remember precisely.
David Marlowe, another of the WFA founders, had kept many of the records and when he died in 1999 Gregory, 74, made two trips to the home of his widow in Newport to fill her Ford Fiesta with crates of lever arch files to preserve them.
The FA were offered the files but kept only some of them and others are now stored in the British Library, but it is believed that a lot of the history has been thrown away.
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Russell Osborne, 44, hosts the Three Lions Podcast and has spent several years researching England women’s football. “I don’t think there’s any way the FA can create a complete legacy list,” Osborne told i. “There are games where the England team isn’t known.”
The researchers helping the FA are, however, confident that a complete legacy list can be compiled. It is thought that four of the players the FA is yet to track down are Jane Stanley, Linda Young, Debbie Mack and Pauline Chilton.
An FA spokesperson said: “In the autumn the FA will honour the England players who played under both The Women’s FA and The FA from 1972 until the present day.
“We of course acknowledge and appreciate the rich history of women’s football in England before 1972, having previously contributed to two permanent tributes to Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club. Other teams will be celebrated during our 50th year anniversary.”
i first revealed the anger England’s original 1972 Lionesses felt at never receiving official caps and how they were hurt that they had been forgotten by the FA.
After this newspaper’s reportage was raised in the House of Commons by Labour MP Barbara Kelley, the FA committed to handing official caps to every female to have played for England, as has been the case with their male counterparts since 1872.
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