Women’s football in the region is steeped in history, from the ban on women’s football in 1922, lasting over four decades, to women’s football pioneers such as Constance Waller, women’s football has seen varying degrees of change in the last 100 years. 

During the First World War, between 1914-1918, thousands of women worked in munitions across Sheffield and Rotherham, which resulted in many factories across the region forming football teams for wounded soldiers to watch as part of fundraising efforts. 

On Boxing Day in 1916, 10,000 spectators watched a match between munitions workers from Vickers Works Projectile Shops in Sheffield at Vickers sports ground, a match which raised £100 for the Wounded Colliers Fund. 

Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground also hosted a fixture between Vickers Works and Barnsley Ladies in 1917; a charity sports event watched in front of a capacity crowd of approximately 17,000. 

The 1917-18 season saw the creation of the South Yorkshire Ladies League and the Sugden Challenge Cup competition, which ran for one season. A fixture between Barnsley National Shell factory and Templeborough National Projectile Factory, based in Sheffield, was held at Barnsley’s Oakwell stadium. 

Grounds such as Hillsborough Stadium, Oakwell, and Rotherham United’s stadiums were used to host women’s matches towards the end of the First World War. 

Clubs like Templeborough National Projectile Factory were formed to encourage more women to play football, where the club had its own factory-based teams for inter-gang matches to take place. 

The roles of women in the industry enabled them to get involved in football matches. Women like Alice Wardle, who worked as an engineer machining the shell cases, played for the Barnsley Shell Factory team, and Wardle was part of the South Yorkshire Ladies Football League Cup side of 1918. 

The Popularity of Women’s Football During the First World War

Whilst attendances at women’s games are hard to track, there is an indication that women’s football was popular during the First World War. 

The popularity of the women’s game varied in different parts of South Yorkshire, however, in Barnsley, the first game attracted a crowd of near 4,000 to Oakwell, higher than the attendance for the men’s side in the Midland Section of the Football League. 

Similarly, at Rotherham, a crowd of near 8,000 was on par with the Rotherham County games during the War. 

Doncaster Rovers Belles had to close down in 1916 due to poor crowds as a result of military service, munitions work and  poor quality of the Midland Combination. This illustrated that the rare crowd of approximately 3,000 fans for one fixture represented a rare and large football crowd in the town between 1916 to 1918. 

Other clubs across the region, such as Tinsley-based ‘Cooke’s’, Tinsley Works, Cammell Lairds and East Gun Works, gave women across South Yorkshire the opportunity to play football during the First World War period. 

One feature of wartime  football was the occasional fixture between men’s and women’s sides. These very much existed as a novelty, where, in these games, male players might operate under a handicap, such as having their arms tied behind their backs or goalkeepers using one arm. 

Sugden Empire Mills (Barnsley) beat a team of wounded soldiers from local hospitals 6-4 on Easter Monday in 1917. A second fixture saw Denaby Munitions Girls draw 4-4 with men from Grimsby Minesweepers, where the men played with their arms tied behind their backs. 

The Press and Attitudes to Women’s Football 

Attitudes towards women’s football from the press were varied. A largely male-dominated media often viewed women’s football as a wartime novelty which was good for raising money for charity. Others initially ran with the same view, but opinions changed over time, and some were supportive of women’s football from the outset. 

Titles in the press, such as Liverpool Football Echo’s ‘Enter Ladies/But Male Footballers’ Not in Danger’ illustrated some views from a heavily male-dominated press at the time. 

Post World War Football and the FA Ban

When the First World War ended in 1918, women’s football also ground to a halt as women were no longer working in factories where teams were formed, and were generally expected to return to day-to-day home jobs. 

The Women’s Football Ban of 1921 saw football grind to a halt. Some women’s football was still played, such as Dick Kerr Ladies of Preston who played Atalanta Ladies of Huddersfield at Hillsborough Stadium in front of 22,000 spectators. 

Several women’s sides formed in the coal mining villages around Doncaster, where games were played to raise money for soup kitchens during the 1921 miners’ strike. 

During the FA ban, little football was played between women. Some charity and organised football took place, such as Carbrook and Sheffield United Supporters’ Club, but the ban meant that women’s football was no longer an entity that many enjoyed during the First World War.