LILY PARR AND THE DICK, KERR LADIES: THE BANNED WOMEN’S TEAM WHO RAISED ALMOST £10M FOR CHARITY

The FA banned women's football from its member clubs' grounds and stadiums on December 5, 1921. Dick, Kerr Ladies had played in front of 53,000 people at Goodison Park just over a year previously, on a day when an estimated 14,000 more were turned away. The popularity of the women's game was at an all-time high. To put those figures in context, the 1920 FA Cup final between Aston Villa and Huddersfield had a crowd of 50,018 people.

If the FA had expected the inexorable rise in popularity of women's football to subside in the aftermath of the resumption of the Football League and FA Cup after World War One ended in November 1918, the events of 1920 had thrown a significant shock to the system. Citing ludicrous and spiteful claims that football was physically unsuitable for women and raising hypocritical questions about how and where gate receipts to matches were absorbed, the FA big-wigs of the early-1920s delivered the ultimate hammer blow to women's football in an act of self-preservation toward the men's game - and perhaps in a bid to kill off a growing social and sporting women's revolution.

On a hectic Monday in 42 Russell Square in London, the former and rumored to be haunted FA headquarters, the powers that be also addressed the idea of professional footballers being permitted to play in amateur games without affecting the amateur status of the clubs involved. They also recommended to the finance committee that the 1922 FA Cup final be held at Stamford Bridge.

While news of the intended FA Cup final venue and the politics of professionals playing in amateur games were noteworthy, the detrimental turn of events revolving around the women's game received little attention in the limited sports pages of the next day's newspapers.

It was nothing short of a harsh and deceptive prohibition, which took the FA 50 years to reverse. Of fact, the harm had already been done to women's football, and those who could recall the glorious days of Dick, Kerr Ladies were clearly of an older vintage.

Dick, Kerr Ladies were the product of a war that was raging over the world, and were founded in Preston at Dick, Kerr & Company, a locomotive and tramcar maker in peacetime and a clandestine armaments factory in wartime. At the height of the war, Dick, Kerr and Company was producing 30,000 shells each week with thousands of women replacing males who had taken up arms on the factory floor.

To boost morale, the women of the factory floor began to play impromptu football games in the yard against the men who had been spared the battlefields to train this new army of female munitions engineers. These games quickly spurred the formation of a works team, which sought out to other firms in the vicinity with the notion of conducting charity games, primarily to generate funds for injured troops and their families, who received little systematic financial support.

Dick, Kerr Ladies played their first organized game in 1917. The opponents were St Helen's Ladies, who would soon become a frequent on-pitch competitor. The game was a hit, around 10,000 spectators showed up to watch the game and support the cause.

They grew from strength to strength under the direction of Alfred Franklin, and they were inundated with requests to play across the country. They were able to attract talented players from other teams as a result of this. One such player was the legendary Lily Parr, an outside-left with tremendous talent and power. She was a phenomenon by the age of 14 after being plucked from St Helen's Ladies.

She was billed as having one of the most powerful shots in the history of the game, on both sides of the gender difference, and she allegedly shattered the wrist of one Football League goalkeeper after he questioned the legitimacy of her abilities with the ball. According to legend, she also broke a crossbar during another game.

Parr was a pioneer in women's football and an idol in the LGBT community for openly embracing her love for her partner, Mary, at a time when communal sensibilities were set to intolerant. Parr approached football and life with great zeal, frequently holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Alice Woods, a tough-tackling and motivated midfielder who was still demonstrating her family how to kick a ball into her 90s, and Joan Whalley, who, like Parr, was elected into the National Football Museum Hall of Fame, were other members of the team.