Celebrating the Joy of Scottish Women’s Football: Self-Belief, Sexism and Overcoming the ‘Old Boy’s Networks’

A Most Unsuitable Game: Celebrating Scottish Women’s Football Fifty Years After the Ban

Edited by Karen Fraser, Julie McNeill, Fiona Skillen
Published by Tippermuir Books. £9.99.
Reviewed by John McIntosh

This book is ambitious – aiming to reflect the stories of the women who have played and play football in Scotland – from internationalists to girls in the street. It is an act of remembering, reclaiming, celebration and social history, offering a compendium of poetry, essays and oral history interviews about the long history of women’s football in Scotland to the present.

Men like, for example, SFA Secretary Willie Allan, who said that he, ‘(did) not approve of ladies playing football’. These women somehow managed to keep their dream alive through sheer determination and their all-consuming love of the game. We know that positive change only happens after a probably arduous process of struggle and resistance.  Today’s women footballers owe their predecessors a debt of gratitude. 

The three editors – Julie McNeill, Makar at The Hamden Collection, poems celebrating Scottish football; Fiona Skillen, a History Professor of History at Glasgow Caledonian University and expert on women’s sport; and Karen Fraser, an independent researcher whose PhD focused on the history of Scottish women’s football – have combined to produce a collection that is by turns edifying, moving and occasionally hilarious.

To give one example of the last – Elsie Cook, first Secretary of the Scottish Women’s Football Association, recalls preparation for the first international between Scotland and England, in 1972. The team was instructed to meet at Anderston Bus Station in Glasgow, but someone forgot to organise transport from there to the training venue. Elsie, cool as you like, flagged down a passing furniture van and talked the driver into taking them to the training venue in Greenock (£30 may have been involved). The girls travelled in style in the back of the van, sitting on couches and armchairs. Parks of Hamilton it was not. 

Reclaiming Past Histories

The first section of the book deals with the early years, in the late 19th and early 20th C., when a number of mock ‘internationals’ were played between teams representing Scotland and England. The teams were made up of actresses and dancers recruited from music halls and theatres and were little more than publicity stunts to attract audiences. It was maybe, at least, a start. The first game, at Easter Road, attracted between 1,000 and 2,000, mostly male, spectators, but newspapers reported that most left before the end. ‘Scotland’ won 3-0. A return match took place a week later at Shawfield Stadium but there, apparently enraged by the sight of women not cooking and being surrounded by children, the men folk expressed their disapproval in a more traditional manner – sexualised catcalls, mockery, and finally a full-blown pitch invasion. The players had to run for their horse-drawn omnibus, and only a police presence prevented them being physically harmed. A proposed third match was hastily canceled.

Further games were attempted fourteen years later, in 1895, but these were also met with ridicule and violent protests. And that appeared to be an end to such nonsense as football for lassies. And for another twenty years, that appeared to be the case. 

Given the context of the times, it is it is of course predictable that the Scottish male psyche would react in the way it did. Then came the First World War. This famously brought about rapid societal changes, most notably in terms of what women were suddenly allowed to do.  The influx of women into spaces traditionally occupied by men, such as factories and other industrial workplaces, led to the formation of many workplace women’s teams, and games started being played at Gala Days and Charity Fundraisers. Supporting such games began to be seen as patriotic, and helping the war effort, so the moral and practical arguments against women enjoying the same privileges as men were quickly set aside. 

In February 1918, a crowd of 15,000 attended another Scotland-England ‘international’ at Celtic Park. This time, it was a game between two munitions factories – Vickers-Maxim in Barrow on Furness, and Beardsmore’s of Parkhead Forge. The English team got away with a 4-0 victory, but Scotland earned a 2- 2 in the return leg. Surely this was a Great Leap Forward and there would be no going back? 

The game is memorialised in Julie McNeill’s poem, ‘Pelted’:

When gunfire/gave cover/women emerged./Some with balls/at their feet/many using their own names,/factories fizzing/with them…they’ll play/the long game/gain ground/in inches and know/that every/blade of grass/is land/hard won.

But power structures always resist change, and it was expected that women would get back in their boxes when they were no longer required to do the men’s jobs. To that end, in 1921 the English FA, rediscovering their moral indignation, duly decided that women’s football should not only be discouraged, it should be banned. The poor girls were risking injury and needed to be protected from exposure to un-ladylike activities. This ban was in place until 1971. Interestingly, the SFA did not (at first) institute a ban, but in practice they did all that they could to prevent women from playing. Women’s football was eventually banned in Scotland, and that ban ran until 1974. Just as the King had banned football in the Middle Ages because it might distract men from their archery practice, it was now banned for women in case they started lifting their noses from their own particular grindstones. 

But things were changing. The fifties happened, and then the sixties. New possibilities were opening. In 1971, UEFA recognised this and put forward a resolution arguing that women’s football be, at last, recognised. It was passed overwhelmingly, by 31 votes to 1. The future had arrived. Though not, apparently, in Park Gardens. The one dissenting voice voting against the resolution spoke in a Kelvinside accent. Scotland Said Naw. The good old SFA was clearly not on board with the whole future thing and could not countenance women wasting their time chasing a ball round a field. That privilege was reserved for men. It took the threat of sanctions from UEFA, coupled with the proposed Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, to force the SFA to emerge blinking into the light. In 1974 they voted to ‘give recognition’ to women’s football. 

This recognition did not mean much in practice. The fledgling Scottish Women’s Football Association, formed in 1972, struggled for over twenty years to be allowed to affiliate to the SFA, a situation that, astonishingly, was only rectified in 1998. 

The structure of this book encourages casual dipping in and out, rather than reading the whole thing.  Longer prose pieces and essays are punctuated by poems from The Hampden Collection, which illuminate and bring to life the reality in the historical accounts. Many poems deal with childhood experiences of exclusion from football – Keeks Mc’s ‘Just Naw 1989’ and Cat Cochrane’s ‘Wee Lassie in the Big Boys’ World’ describe that common experience well. Cochrane writes of a football-daft girl being given…

… a peg for her football boots…/

before she’d even outworn them.

The casual oppression of forcing girls and women down ‘suitable’ paths and the sadness this brought are all too evident.

Scottish Football Pioneers: Elsie Cook, Susan Ferries and Rose Reilly

Many women played important roles in the evolution of Scottish Women’s football, none more so than the legendary Elsie Cook. Her name occurs frequently throughout the book, and in a section titled ‘In Her Ain Words’, she tells the incredible story of how she became perhaps the most influential woman in the development of women’s football in Scotland.  Elsie is a natural storyteller and brings to life the sights, sounds and smells of that episode. Her excitement is palpable. After 60 years, she can ‘still see, smell and sense that dressin’ room’.

Julie McNeill and Rose Reilly, Kirkcudbright Fringe Festival, September 2024.

In 1961, Elsie was a fourteen-year-old girl in Stewarton in Ayrshire. Along with her pals Liz and Madge, she was a faithful Killie fan. Her mum, Betty Bennett, worked in Holyrood Knitwear in East Kilbride, the managing director of which happened to be the Lord Provost of Kilmarnock, one Walter Syme. The knitwear had a women’s team, the Holyrood Bumbees, and Syme asked Betty if she could get a team together who might provide the Bumbees with some opposition in a charity game raising funds for starving people in Ethiopia. Betty immediately enrolled Elsie and her pals, who, she felt, knew about football through their Kilmarnock loyalties. 

Fourteen-year-old Elsie threw herself whole heartedly into the project. A netball team provided seven players, Elsie’s pals, who, she admits had ‘never really kicked a ba’’, supplied another three, and training got underway. Her uncle and a couple of other local men took training sessions. Elsie was tipped off about a girl from Riccarton, Susan Ferries, who was by all accounts a great player, and she agreed to turn out for what was now christened Stewarton Thistle Ladies’ Football Club. Boots of all vintages and sizes were donated, Elsie made posters advertising the game, and a crowd of around 500 turned up to see ‘a wummin’s gemme’. 

Susan Ferries eventually ‘swaggered gallusly’ into the dressing room, ‘a braw, curly-heided lassie, dressed in the style of the time’. Elsie’s team won 7-0, Susan scoring all seven goals, and she went on to play for the team for twelve years. The boots Susan bought that morning from a second-hand shop in Kilmarnock are now, Elsie reports, ‘…deservedly in pride of place alongside her Scotland cap, in the SFA Football Museum’. 

A fascinating postscript to the story is that, after the game, a wee boy was looking for the manager and was directed to fourteen-year-old Elsie. ‘Haw Mrs.’ he cried. ‘Can I get a gemme?’ With a short back and sides and carrying a football, the boy looked about seven years old. When Elsie told him that this was in fact ‘a lassie’s team’, the wee boy indignantly replied that he was a lassie. Elsie told her to come back in two year’s time. 

Two years to the day later, the girl turned up again, looking for a game. It turns out that this was none other than Rose Reilly, who would go on to become Scotland’s greatest ever woman football player, winning national championships in Italy and France on consecutive days, with Milan on the Saturday before flying to Reims that night to win the French league title on the Sunday. She was eventually capped by Italy and won the closest thing the women’s game had to a World Cup, the Mundialito, picking up countless personal awards along the way. 

Arguably no male Scottish player in history has come close to the achievements of this working-class girl from Stewarton.  In recent years she has received some long-overdue acclaim, but seriously, this woman should be on our bank notes. Elsie has a brilliant black and white photo of the Stewarton team that day, May the first 1961, Susan Ferries and all. Keeking in from the edge is seven-year-old Rose, short back and sides and carrying, as always, a football. 

Stewarton Thistle on the day they were formed, 1 May 1961. Front row left: Susan Ferries; right: Elsie Cook; on the far left looking at the camera is seven-year-old Rose Reilly.

Stewarton Thistle went on to great success, and Elsie herself went on to become the first Secretary of the Scottish Women’s Football Association. In 1972, this trailblazer organised the first proper women’s international between Scotland and England. Her dad bought football tops from a jumble sale and Elsie sewed the Scotland badges onto them herself, while Rangers donated shorts and socks. Scotland lost that day (but they had traveled to training in the back of a furniture van, so possibly no surprise there). Elsie eventually resigned as SWFA Secretary, whereupon she was immediately offered the job of National Team Manager. She is 77 years old now, but still works with the SFA and other groups to promote the women’s game in Scotland. 

As the proud father of two daughters, I am under no illusions about the obstacles that are still routinely placed in the paths of Scotland’s girls and women. Men must continue to call this out, to work for greater equality. It’s kind of a duty. This book makes that clear. In 2017, my wife and I followed Anna Signeul’s Scotland team round the Netherlands on bikes, taking in all three of their games in the European Championship. Our first game was against England in Utrecht, the latest installment of a fixture I now know goes back to Easter Road in 1881; the game ending in a 6-0 victory for England. We then lost again, to Portugal, by two goals to one. In our final game, however, we did what Scotland do, and beat Spain 1-0, so we went home happy. 

Football may be the beautiful game. But it is still a game. This book is an important one, but it is about much more than a game. It is more than a football book. It is about Scotland, and Scottishness, and women, and their struggle to overcome centuries of prejudice and discrimination. Women may be inching forward all the time, but the road gets steeper.

So get on board. Buy a copy. Buy two. And get along to a game. And when Erin or Claire or Leanne smash one into the top corner, you’ll feel that this is about more than a game. And you’ll see that the stands are not only filled with crowds of excited girls and young women taking selfies in their Scotland kits and refusing to sit down. The ghosts of thousands of women are all around them, wearing all sorts of old-fashioned clothes, looking round, laughing, singing, and cheering to see how far their sisters have come. In her poem ‘The Women Before Her’, Julie McNeill looks at a five-year-old girl sitting watching Scotland play and singing along with thousands of other girls and women in the crowd. McNeill writes: 

They show her/what women/ can do when /we raise each other./She believes in/the women who/save themselves/the girls standing /ready to gie it laldy/shoulder to shoulder /before her.