Kissing Footballers

Kissing Footballers landscape

On loan to us as part of the Players Foundation Collection, Kissing Footballers is an artwork by Heather McGrath. Unfortunately, we don’t know many more official details about it other than this, which would usually mean it is perhaps not the best object to choose to write a blog about!

However, one thing we did spot immediately was that this artwork was almost certainly representative of the early years of women’s football. Originally when cataloguing this artwork and identifying information about it for our collections management database, we believed it to be representative of the Dick, Kerr Ladies FC, the most famous and successful women’s football team of the 1920s. We even thought it was perhaps DKL’s star player Lily Parr on the right of the painting in the teams famous black and white striped kit.

However, after internal discussion and looking at other photographs of women’s football during that era, it was discovered that this artwork is based on a photograph of Lyons Ladies FC, from London in February 1921.

Why are the players kissing? The truthful answer is that we don’t know. It is possible that a male photographer asked them to, perhaps wanting to frame the photo to make women playing football seem strange or inappropriate to people at the time who thought it was something only men should do. Despite us only being able to speculate that this is what the artwork means to depict; it also portrays the all too forgotten presence of women’s football in society from its origins in the late 1800s up to the 1920s.

Above: two similar images, from Dick, Kerr Ladies v France in 1920 (left) and DKL v Femina SC in 1925 (right) suggest that may have been a common pre-match greeting between players of opposing teams.

The official beginnings of women’s football can be traced all the way back to 1894, when Nettie Honeyball and Lady Florence Dixie formed the British Ladies Football Club. The Club was set up as a way of making money and to promote the Suffragette movement, and to show that women could play football just as well as men could. The very first British Ladies FC-organised match was a meeting between the North and South in March 1895, at London’s Crouch End. 10,000 spectators amassed to see the North beat the South 7-1, and this large crowd was certainly a sign of what was to come.

Twenty years later and after the outbreak of the First World War, women began to take on many of the traditional roles previously held by the men who had gone to fight for their country.  In factories across the nation women contributed to the war effort, perhaps most famously in their roles in the manufacture of munitions, leading them to be known as the Munitionettes. When working long days in these factories, many women up and down the country would spend their well-deserved lunch breaks playing football. This was encouraged by the government to keep workers fit and healthy, as well as being a fun way to pass the time and reset ready for another afternoon of hard and vital work.

Women’s football became steadily more popular outside of lunch breaks at work too, often attracting large crowds due to being seen as somewhat of a novelty. The rising popularity of the women’s game meant that soon it became apparent that there was another way women could contribute to the war effort outside of work – by attracting large crowds to come and watch them play matches to raise money for charity. Teams were established and started to compete mainly against local rivals, raising money for charities close to them. There were also sides that travelled around the UK, and even abroad after the war.

The most famous and successful of these teams was undoubtedly the Dick, Kerr Ladies, formed in 1917 at Dick, Kerr & Co Ltd in Preston. The Dick, Kerr & Co factory transformed from producing trams and railway stock to solely focusing on ammunition for the war effort, and the Preston Munitionettes often joked about the bad football performances by the men’s team. They were challenged to a game which led to them forming their own team. Alfred Frankland was seconded to Dick, Kerr and Co as a clerk during the war and saw potential in the Ladies. With his organisational skills and flair for marketing he became their mentor and manager and pushed for them to play in charity matches.

Dick Kerr Ladies

On Christmas Day 1917 over 10,000 spectators came to watch the newly formed Dick, Kerr Ladies play in their black and white striped kit at Deepdale, Preston. This first match was in aid of wounded soldiers at Moor Park Military Hospital across the road, and their 4-0 victory raised a phenomenal £600, which equates to about £52,000 today.

The Ladies steadily became more and more popular, seen rightfully as impressive footballers rather than just an amusing novelty watch. Permission was sought from and granted by Churchill for the use of anti-aircraft searchlights and flares to light up a later DKL game in 1921. 12,000 spectators looked on in amazement as the team beat the Rest of England 4-0, and this match was even filmed by Pathe News.

A mere 10 days after the match v the Rest of England team, the Dick, Kerr Ladies made history when 53,000 people packed into Goodison Park, the home of Everton, to watch them beat local side St. Helen’s 4-0. Thousands more who hoped to see the infamous DKL were locked outside, and a total of £3,000 (around £137,500 today) was raised for charity. The women’s game ascended to a new high, and this record attendance was not beaten until a crowd of 70,584 gathered at Wembley to watch Great Britain’s 1-0 Olympic Games win against Brazil. Many of the DKL players such as Lily Parr now attained superstar status, and it seemed like the talented ladies would surely go on to set new records rivalling the men.

Unfortunately, with this record-breaking attendance and newfound fame also came the attention of The FA, who decided that football was “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”. The FA also claimed it could negatively affect a woman’s frame and fertility. It is often thought today that The FA were perhaps concerned at the adverse effect that the rise and popularity of women’s football might have on the men’s game, and this all culminated in The FA declaring that absolutely none of its affiliated clubs should allow women’s matches to be played on their grounds.

Women’s teams were effectively banned from accessing every football ground in the country and this completely decimated their ability to draw in crowds of hundreds or more at a time, let alone more record-breaking crowds. It is these attitudes that we can perhaps see in the artwork, with the players being forced to make their sport look even more against the societal norm at the time.

There was, however, an immediate reaction of defiance, and a few days later 30 clubs met in Blackburn to form the English Ladies Football Association and establish the ELFA Challenge Cup. In London, the Lyons Ladies organised an exhibition match and invited the press along to share their thoughts on the FA’s decision. The generally shared opinion after the match was that football was no more strenuous for women than sports such as tennis or hockey, yet the ban on women’s football was not lifted until 50 years later in 1971.

The FA previously tried to erase the women’s game which unfortunately meant teams like the Dick, Kerr Ladies and the Lyons Ladies have been overlooked too often in the history of football. Kissing Footballers reminds us that the women’s game was present in society and was proud to be. We could also see the kiss as an act of defiance against societal constraints on women and LGBTQ+ people at the time, going far beyond football. Above all, Kissing Footballers reminds us of how far the women’s game has come, from being banished to playing in local parks to our Lionesses winning the Euros in 2022 and bringing it home. Long may its success continue.

Kissing Footballers is currently on display in the museum on our Match Gallery Art Wall.