Aroundtown Magazine July/August 2022

SPORT
Grassroots
to Glory
Football fever is set to
hit Rotherham this July
as the town becomes
one of the host venues
for this year’s UEFA
Women’s EURO
tournament.
To celebrate the occasion, a new
temporary exhibition is on at Clifton
Park Museum detailing the history of
women’s football through the years.
Grassroots to Glory – Our Story
so Far is part of a National Lottery
funded project to uncover the
hidden history of women’s football
in a summer of celebration of the
game, its players and communities.
The exhibition has been
curated by the team at Rotherham
Museums, Arts and Heritage to
improve the visibility of women’s
football within its archives
and collections.
Women’s football has a longer
history than most people would
expect, especially in Rotherham.
Through research in newspaper
archives, it has been revealed
that the earliest recorded local
football match was in 1893
during the Victorian era when
Rawmarsh Ladies took on Wath
Gentlemen, most likely in aid of a
charitable cause.
Football has long been
associated with wartime reprieve,
but in the First World War a team of
munition workers from the National
Projectile Factory at Templeborough
played their first match at Milmoor
Stadium on 24 March 1917.
Just four years later, women
were banned from playing on FA
affiliated pitches, a ban that stood
for 50 years until it was overturned
‘‘Rotherham has produced some pioneering
players who started in the grassroots of the
borough’s playing fields and went on to play
on international pitches’’
40 aroundtownmagazine.co.uk
in 1971. But women never gave up,
despite the generations of gender
discrimination.
Teams like Kilnhurst Ladies
and Doncaster Belles, which both
started in 1969, began to level the
playing field for women and girls.
The Belles were the first winners of
the Women’s FA Cup in 1983 and
went on to win it five more times.
The oral history project has also
uncovered nine individual stories
of women.
Rotherham has produced some
pioneering players who started in
the grassroots of the borough’s
playing fields and went on to play
on international pitches of European
Championships or had a career
within the football industry.
Annetta Harvey was one of the
first women referees in the 1970s
with a qualification recognised by
the Football Association. Annetta
was a nurse at Doncaster Gate
Hospital, a fitness instructor, mum
of two boys, and a strict but fair
referee who officiated local and
county senior matches.
Cathy Hamstead was given
a telling off from her headmaster
for playing football at school but
ended up playing for the England
team in 1976 aged 17 where
she represented her country in
the PONY Home International
Championship against Scotland.
The female game changed
somewhat over the next few
decades, with barriers reducing for
women. Vicky Exley was just four
when her footballing talent came to
light and her schoolteachers helped
her join Sheffield Wednesday Ladies
when she was 15. She then joined
Doncaster Belles for whom she
played for 22 years until she retired
in 2012. During her time with the
Belles, Vicky was called up to play
for England 52 times, including at
the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Films and audio stories from
the women can be found in the
exhibition as well as objects
including shirts, memorabilia and
medals loaned from them. The
exhibition also includes loans
from National Football Museum
in Manchester including a Panini
official licensed sticker album for the
FIFA Women’s World Cup France
2011 and an England women’s
national team shirt worn by
goalkeeper Leanne Hall in a 2004
match against Germany and signed
by the team.
Visitors can play table football,
test out their punditry skills, play a
penalty shoot-out counting game,
create a scrapbook collage, and
add some words and phrases to the
poetry pitch.
There is also a map of all the
current women and girls’ football
teams in Rotherham, from Wath to
Wickersley, as well as a home kit
loaned by each club
The Women’s EURO is the
biggest women’s sporting event
in Europe and it is hoped that its
legacy here in the UK will encourage
more young girls to take up the
sport and become the Lionesses of
tomorrow.