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Arrival: How Scotland’s Women Took Their Place on the World Stage and Inspired a Generation
Arrival: How Scotland’s Women Took Their Place on the World Stage and Inspired a Generation
Arrival: How Scotland’s Women Took Their Place on the World Stage and Inspired a Generation
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Arrival: How Scotland’s Women Took Their Place on the World Stage and Inspired a Generation

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In the early 1970s in Scotland, women's football existed in the margins. Unrecognised by the Scottish Football Association, banned from playing in stadiums and with no recognised national team. Arrival tells the fascinating, inspiring and uplifting story of how Scotland's women footballers fought for their right to play, battling hostility, prejudice and intolerance in order to create a national side that the country could be proud of. Drawing on illuminating interviews with Scotland players and managers past and present, including Anna Signeul and Shelley Kerr, it tells the inside story of the remarkable journey that the Scotland women's national team made from formation to eventual qualification for the European Championship and World Cup. It reveals the passion, commitment and determination that enabled Scotland to build a squad capable of competing with the best in the world and inspiring a generation. Arrival is the true story of a team battling against the odds to take their place on the world stage.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 15, 2021
ISBN9781785319105
Arrival: How Scotland’s Women Took Their Place on the World Stage and Inspired a Generation

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    Arrival - Steven Lawther

    1

    Recognition

    IT IS impossible to know exactly what was in the mind of the Scottish Football Association as they submitted their vote against formally recognising women’s football to UEFA in 1971. Was it based on a belief that football just wasn’t a game for females? Did they feel that women’s physiques were not suited to playing the sport? Was it a fear that allowing women to play would somehow undermine the essence of the men’s game? Or was it simply good old-fashioned sexism? We’ll probably never know exactly what contributed to their logic, but in voting against the recognition of women’s football, the message sent was clear – females playing football in Scotland was not acceptable. The concept that women playing football was somehow wrong was not a new one. It had been a well-worn argument used over the decades in an attempt to belittle, ridicule and undermine. At the moment a woman first kicked a football, there was probably a voice, most likely male, questioning her right to do so.

    It was this long-standing view that led to the mostly male crowd invading the pitch at one of the earliest Scotland v England contests in Glasgow in 1881. It is unlikely that the two teams lining up at the start of the match were truly representative of the best players in the two countries at the time, with some suspicion that they called themselves ‘Scotland’ and ‘England’ merely to attract an audience, but the pitch invasion and the chaos that ensued meant that the game couldn’t be played to a conclusion. The contest, a series of three planned matches between the sides, was greeted with derision in the press, with the Glasgow News reporting that, ‘Football is not a game for women; and the spectacle of a score of girls careering about a field in knickerbockers is not to be defended on any ground of public utility.’

    Opposition to women’s football reached its peak in the 1920s when the Football Association in England passed a resolution banning female footballers from using their grounds and pitches. Any hope of the game north of the border escaping the same punitive measure was extinguished when the Scottish FA followed their lead and extended the spirit of the ban in Scotland. A formal acknowledgement of their position would not be made until the late 1940s, but a number of Scottish clubs’ requests to host women’s matches were met with the response that ‘This Association does not approve of clubs arranging or sponsoring or letting grounds for Ladies’ football matches.’

    It is impossible now to know exactly how the women’s game in Scotland would have evolved over the following years had the football authorities at the time chosen to embrace it rather than attempt to eradicate it, but it was a huge setback, with a generation of girls and women denied the opportunity to play. Matches still took place at unaffiliated grounds, but accessing pitches, facilities and officials became a constant struggle for those who wanted to participate.

    It would take until the early 1970s before the possibility of real change arrived.

    With numerous women’s leagues emerging across Europe and two successful, but unofficial, Women’s World Cups held at the start of the decade, UEFA began to take notice. The governing body responsible for men’s football in Europe moved swiftly to bring the women’s game under their influence by recommending that national governing bodies across Europe assume responsibility for the sport. The move was more likely motivated by money and self-interest than a burning desire to advance the women’s game, but it would finally force every national association, including the Scottish FA, to grant official recognition to women’s football.

    UEFA’s initial communication of their intentions was met with resistance in Glasgow. Minutes from a Scottish FA meeting in September 1970 reported: ‘There was submitted correspondence with UEFA who enquired as to the Association’s attitude towards women’s football, and with the Women’s Football Association (WFA), who sought recognition, in Scotland. The committee were unanimous in their refusal.’

    Two months later, the WFA tried their luck again, only to be met with the same response. This policy of belligerence continued right up until the UEFA vote on the subject in 1971. Astonishingly, in that vote, every single football association in Europe voted in favour of formally recognising the women’s game, except one – Scotland.

    There have been many moments in the history of the Scottish FA when it has been subject to criticism. It is perhaps the inevitable fate of a governing body to be unloved by the fans who follow the game, with many quick to perceive incompetence or bias. The majority of criticism is unfounded or overblown, but by choosing to stand alone as a beacon of intolerance towards women’s football in 1971, then, for once, the organisation deserved every ounce of the derision aimed its way.

    There was hope amongst those campaigning for women’s football in Scotland that the passing of UEFA’s motion would result in a change in thinking at the Scottish FA, but their Secretary, Willie Allan, was unmoved, interpreting it as only a recommendation not an instruction. If Allan hoped that his opponents would lose heart as a result of his refusal to follow the rest of Europe’s lead, he was wrong. ‘I felt like a suffragette,’ says Elsie Cook, one of the leading voices for women’s football at the time. ‘I was adamant, Why should girls not be allowed to play the game they have come to love?

    Within a year, Cook had helped form the Scottish Women’s Football Association, becoming its inaugural secretary in 1972. The league comprised just six teams: Aberdeen, Dundee Strikers, Edinburgh Dynamos, Motherwell AEI, Stewarton Thistle and Westhorn United. But it was a significant step forward. Cook was also instrumental in setting up the first official international match between Scotland and England. The squad was selected for the game over three months of trials under the guidance of manager Rab Stewart, a former Kilmarnock and St Mirren player. There was no support from the national association, so the squad travelled to training in a milk van and the team’s jerseys were bought in a jumble sale in Stewarton, with Cook personally sewing on each Scotland badge.

    On the morning of the match, they improvised to make kick-off when their minibus didn’t arrive at Anderston bus station in Glasgow. Cook stopped a passing furniture van and asked the driver if he could take the team to the match in the back of his lorry, which he duly did. The Scotland team played the match at Ravenscraig Park in Greenock, the venue selected to avoid contravening the ban on playing on an affiliated pitch. ‘I can remember it was icy and it was absolutely freezing,’ recalls Jean Hunter, making her Scotland debut aged 17. ‘I did a slide tackle and went right off the pitch.’

    The team performed well in the early stages of the game, with goals from Mary Carr and Rose Reilly putting them 2-1 ahead. Unfortunately, the England squad had considerably more experience and managed to score twice in the second half to win the game 3-2. ‘If it had been a proper park, we would have won no bother,’ reflects Scotland left-half Sandra Walker. ‘The ability in the team was unbelievable.’

    The team may have been narrowly defeated, but they had created a moment of history, although it would take another 47 years for them to receive the recognition of an official cap for their effort.

    The writing was soon on the wall for the Scottish FA’s long-standing policy of exclusion. The rest of European football had long since moved on and at home the Sex Discrimination Act was working its way through Parliament, legislation that would effectively end discrimination. There would soon be no legal basis to exclude women from the sport they loved. On 29 August 1974 the Scottish FA finally relented and passed a resolution stating: ‘It was agreed to give recognition to women’s football.’

    That simple sentence and those nine short words now seem wholly inadequate in reflecting both the significance of the decision and the struggle that so many women had endured to reach that point, but the surrender was welcome. With the ban lifted, Celtic manager Jock Stein became one of the first to reach out, inviting the Scotland Women’s National Team to play in an exhibition match at Parkhead before a European Cup tie against Olympiakos. It may have only been a short 30-minute exhibition match, but the symbolism of the invitation was not lost on the Scotland players. ‘After the game Jock Stein stood at the tunnel and shook every lassie by the hand and thanked her very much,’ recalled Elsie Cook. ‘That was the first time we’d officially been able to play at a senior ground.’

    The restrictive and unjust ban had at last been lifted, with women’s football finally receiving the recognition it deserved. It was a moment to applaud, but those involved in the game knew that they were still a long distance from having the support and investment required to flourish. The battle may have been won, but the real struggle was just about to begin.

    2

    Resistance

    ROSE REILLY reflects on her approach to football. ‘The hurdles I had at the start – not just me but all the other girls as well – I didn’t jump over the hurdles or go under or go around them, I just smashed them down.’

    It was a philosophy that she would maintain throughout her journey, as women’s football in Scotland began to emerge from its 50-year period of exclusion. Reilly was born in 1955 into a working-class Ayrshire family. From an early age, it was obvious that she wasn’t going to accept the traditional interests and pastimes expected of a young girl in her era. Football dominated her thoughts. ‘One year I got a doll at Christmas and I was absolutely devastated because I wanted a football,’ says Reilly. ‘I wasn’t long in swapping it for a ball. I actually slept with the ball every night, for two reasons. One, because I was in love with it, and two, because I was afraid my mum would take it off me!’

    The ball was kept, and she was soon playing football with it on a regular basis. Reilly’s twin sister, Mary, recalls her wandering around to the local pitch to play football with the boys, and their mum repeatedly sending her older brothers to bring her back. Undaunted, Rose simply returned. Informal kickabouts in the park led to joining a boys’ club, after a trip to the barber for a short back and sides. Her coach believed that the hairstyle would allow her to blend in and take part in matches undetected, but it would not be long before her football talent marked her out. ‘In one particular game I had scored eight goals,’ says Reilly, ‘and there was a Celtic scout there looking for youngsters and ‘S’ Forms. At the end of the game they asked the manager if they could sign the wee boy, the wee number seven, and they said, Oh no, that’s a wee lassie. The Celtic scout said, No, no, no, the one that scored all the eight goals. They said, That’s a wee girl. I got speaking to him and I was absolutely gutted that I couldn’t play for Celtic. I said, But why can I not play for Celtic if I’m good enough?

    Reilly realised that if she couldn’t forge a career in the men’s game, then she would just have to do it in the women’s. She approached Elsie Cook, who ran the local women’s team, Stewarton Thistle, and asked for a game. As a result of the seven-year-old’s hair, Cook initially thought that it was a young boy approaching her, but once she realised that Rose was indeed female, she advised her to come back in two years when she was older. ‘I had a wee diary thing,’ says Reilly. ‘I ticked it off every day to the very second and I was back to Elsie. Then I started playing with the ladies.’

    Reilly began her football career with Stewarton Thistle aged just nine years old. ‘I was daft playing a nine-year-old in a team in their early and late teens,’ reflects Elsie Cook. ‘But she was amazing. She was like lightning. Tore through defences like they weren’t there. Her passes were exceptional. Her reading of the game was exceptional. Her timing was exceptional.’

    Reilly had outstanding talent and natural athleticism, and opponents were soon struggling to cope with her speed and ability. Sheila Begbie, who would later play alongside Reilly in the Scotland national team, recalls lining up against the talented young player at the start of her career. ‘The games I played against Rose were really challenging,’ says Begbie. ‘She was really powerful. She was a really skilful player and she was really fast. We had some really tough battles. I always dreaded a Sunday morning when I was getting ready and started to think about the game. I’d think, Oh my God, I’ve got Rose today.

    Reilly became a regular in the Stewarton Thistle team, but continued to seek out games at every opportunity. The playground had always provided the chance to hone her skills in an impromptu match, but when she moved to a school in Kilmarnock things became trickier. The school had a strict separation policy between boys and girls, with each allocated their own playgrounds. The problem for Reilly was that all the football at breaktime took place in the boys’ playground, so she began making the regular journey across in order to get a game. When caught, she suffered the punishment of the school belt, but Reilly didn’t care, as long as she got her game of football.

    There was a brief dalliance with a potential athletics career, when Reilly was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Games pentathlon squad and invited to a week-long training session at the University of St Andrews. The differing demands of the sport meant that she was advised by her athletics coaches to stop playing football, but it was to prove an impossible request. ‘I stopped playing for a week,’ recalls Reilly. ‘I kept looking at my legs and I went to bed crying every night. After a week I decided no athletics career, I was going to be a footballer.’

    The choice was a brave one, particularly given the state of women’s football in Scotland at the time. It was the late 1960s and the Scottish FA were still refusing to recognise the game. The prospect of a professional career in football for a female player seemed fanciful, but it was an ambition that Reilly remained faithful to even after leaving school to start work in a local carpet factory.

    ‘When I used to walk up to the factory,’ says Reilly, ‘the one-and-a-half-mile walk in the morning, I used to dream of going abroad and being a professional footballer. That is all I thought about. I didn’t even notice if it was raining or whatever. Once I got to the factory, I had already been somewhere in my professional career in my head.’

    Reilly’s talent led her into the Scotland side to face England in the first official match between the sides in Greenock, scoring once in the 3-2 defeat, and brought the offer of a place in the Great Britain team for the unofficial World Cup in Mexico in 1971. Circumstance meant that she had to decline the offer, a crushing blow. ‘I was devastated,’ says Reilly. ‘I was crying all the time out of frustration. I never really spoke to anybody about it. I kind of shut myself away and was just determined to make a career out of it, out of football, even though I hadn’t a clue about how I was going to go about it.’

    Rose would eventually decide to pursue her ambition outside Scotland. She had read about a British player, Anna Brian, who had left for a professional career in France and decided to attempt the same path. Enlisting the help of a Daily Record reporter, she contacted Reims and, with sponsorship from the newspaper, headed to France along with talented team-mate Edna Neillis. ‘We flew out to Reims and there was a game specially arranged for us and they signed us on at half-time,’ recounts Reilly. ‘They didn’t even wait until the game finished. They couldn’t get the ball off us. We ran riot.’

    Reilly reflects back now on the simplicity of her decision to leave home for France aged just 18 and the impact it must have had on her parents. ‘It must have been hellish for them,’ says the footballer. ‘I was just going to play football. I would have gone to the moon if they had played football there. I didn’t realise how much I was going to miss my family, my mum and my dad. I hadn’t a clue. The emotion had taken over about me going for this football career.’

    She would quickly transition to Italian football, one of the most successful women’s leagues in Europe, when impressive early performances for Reims attracted the interest of AC Milan. ‘I hadn’t even eaten Spaghetti Hoops before I went there, never mind the real spaghetti,’ jokes Reilly. ‘But when my plane first touched down in Milan, I felt at home.’

    The following years in Italian football would bring her unparalleled success. She won the title in her first season, scoring the winning goal in the match that secured the Scudetto. She would go on to win eight titles for six Italian clubs and in one season managed to add the French Championship, turning out for both Reims and her Italian side, Lecce. Her team-mates in that era remember a supremely talented footballer and a natural leader. ‘She was a captain, let’s say a true leader,’ recalls Italian Viola Langella. ‘She was very humble. She was never intrusive, but when it was time to talk, we had to be quiet and think about playing the game.’

    Reilly’s innate talent made her a success, but it was backed up by hard work and determination. ‘I had a natural talent obviously, but I worked very hard,’ Reilly insists. ‘For example, sometimes we would train in the evenings because of the heat and I would train on my own at midday to get used to the heat and to better myself. I was on a mission to play the best football I could in the best country where they allowed me to play professional football.’

    Reilly was no longer having to jump over obstacles or break down barriers to play. The possibilities that Italian football offered the striker remained unimaginable back home in Scotland, where being a woman still meant having to fight for your right even to participate. ‘We were up against it from the very beginning,’ explains Elsie Cook. ‘We weren’t allowed to use SFA pitches or SFA referees or officials or anything to do with a professional club. We struggled for players. We struggled for opponents. We struggled for referees and match officials. We struggled financially and we couldn’t use the parks and the changing rooms. We were treated like lesser people. It made you angry. But that was what drove you to keep going.’

    Any hope that the recognition of the women’s game in 1974 would herald in a new era for women playing football in Scotland was dispelled by the lingering antipathy demonstrated by those in charge at Park Gardens. Support for the women’s game remained virtually non-existent.

    Things would reach breaking point in 1975. When the Scottish FA made their choice of a new manager for the Scotland national women’s team, there was criticism that the person selected was a poorly qualified amateur male and a number of players expressed their reservations to the media. In the fallout from the controversy, Edna Neillis and Rose Reilly, two of Scotland’s most talented players, received a lifetime ban from playing for their country. The reasoning behind the decision remains shrouded in confusion for the players. ‘I still don’t have an answer for it,’ says Reilly. ‘Nothing was ever written down. I was in Italy and there was no communication. I didn’t even know until my friend Elsie [Cook] told me. We didn’t have phones in those days, so she wrote me a letter.’

    There was suspicion that the players were singled out because of their success overseas and their decision to play professionally. ‘I think it was about keeping people in their place,’ says former Scotland team-mate Sheila Begbie. ‘That working-class thing of who the hell do they think they are? That was maybe where Scotland was at, at that point, in terms of women in our society.’

    Reilly is now pragmatic about the ban. ‘It was their loss,’ she reflects. ‘I moved on. I wasn’t being big-headed, but I’m practical and realistic. I just thought, How small-minded. I should have been playing for Scotland, my home country, but they didn’t want me, and the Italians did.’

    No longer allowed to play for her own country, Reilly was quickly drafted into the Italian national team as they recognised the potential of adding a unique talent to their squad. Eligibility to play international football was relatively fluid and after the backing of the President of the Federazione Calcio Femminile, Giovanni Trabucco, was secured, the former Scotland striker was allowed to represent Italy. The transition would produce the highlight of her career when she helped her adopted country win an international tournament in 1984 in the seaside resort of Jesolo, scoring once and providing an assist in a 3-1 defeat of West Germany. Scoring in the final is an achievement she remains fiercely proud of to this day. ‘The ball hit the crossbar and I was lurking just a wee bit away from the post,’ recalls Reilly. ‘I pounced on it, great coordination, boom – two nothing. I was so proud, scoring for Italy in a World Cup Final.’

    Reilly was substituted late in the game, a frustrating moment for the Scot who always just wanted to play, but any lingering resentment dissipated when the final whistle went. Reflecting back now, there is no sense of resentment about how events in her career unfolded. ‘There is absolutely no anger,’ she insists. ‘No regret, nothing like that. Everything happens for a reason. I had the career I had because Scotland banned me, basically. I’ve said it many times, there was always a Scottish heart beating under an Italian jersey.’

    Reilly continued playing until she was 40 and over the course of her career won a French title, eight Scudetti, four national cups and two Golden Boots as the highest scorer in Serie A. She was also nominated as the world’s best female footballer, which gave her particular personal satisfaction. She would eventually be recognised back in her home country when she became the first woman to enter the Scottish Football Hall of Fame and was also inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame. ‘I got piped in,’ recounts Reilly. ‘And when I heard the bagpipes, that was me. I had a lump in my throat, and I couldn’t speak. A World Cup with Italy, wow, but being bagpiped into a museum in Edinburgh Castle … I was home then.’

    Rose’s remarkable story was brought to a wider audience when she featured in a BBC Alba documentary in 2019. ‘The fact that my own folk, the Scottish folk, know more about me is thanks to Margot McCuaig,’ says Reilly. ‘For a couple of years, she kept phoning me to see if I would do this documentary. She persuaded me and I opened up about myself.

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