The Northern Ireland trailblazers for women’s football

In October 1921, 16,000 attended a game at Windsor Park between Belfast Ladies and Dick, Kerr’s Ladies. Other tour matches were given international status. During that period one Belfast Hospital Sports Gala Committee meeting reported that £2,000 – something in the region of £90,000 now – had already been raised for vital causes.

A proposed match between ‘Mrs W Scott’s team and a team of ladies brought from France’ was stated to require a guarantee of £600 in order to be staged.

The Warrior Day Fund, the Billy Parish Church Bazaar and the Shipwrecked Mariners Society were among those to benefit from many of these exhibition matches where everyone had to pay the entrance fee to watch some of the pioneers of the women’s game in action.

Additional bonuses could include warm-up five-a-side matches and the occasional appearance from Belfast’s Lady Mayoress to perform the kick-off. On one occasion, through the kindness of a Mr HL Garrett, ‘the visiting team took part in a Co. Down coast charabanc tour and were entertained to tea by Mr Johnston at Crawfordsburn’.

“Players like Molly Seaton, Lily Parr and my grandmother Lizzy Ashcroft were trailblazers, part of the reason why women’s football has survived,” says Steve Bolton, who discovered more about Ashcroft’s career with the Dick, Kerr Ladies (DKL) when he opened some old suitcases stored in the loft of her home.

“Lizzy made her debut for St Helens against Stoke in 1921. There were 30,000 at the game. She later joined up with Lily Parr at DKL.”

Talks are in hand for a possible gallery at Manchester’s National Football Museum.

“It is exciting for my family to have discovered this bit of football history. It would be appropriate if the Irish FA did something similar to honour the memory of Molly Seaton.”