Ladies’ goal was soccer equality (From Lancashire Telegraph)
When news happens, text LT and your photos and videos to 80360. Or contact us by email or phone.
Ladies’ goal was soccer equality
3:21pm Thursday 2nd August 2012 in Looking Back
By Gill Johnson, Features writer
ACCRINGTON’S champion women footballers – the Wanderers – called foul against the male-dominated Football Association back in the early sixties.
For its rulings prevented the angry young team from:
- playing on FA grounds anywhere in the county
- engaging FA referees, and linesmen
- enrolling for football coaching classes at the town’s college of further education.
Betty Taylor, who worked by day in a television shop, and was the team manager, fired off a furious letter to FA headquarters in London, seeking soccer equality for the sexes.
She said: “We’ve been running into difficulties since first being established in the early 50s because of an unsympathetic and all-male Football Association, but we want recognition for ladies’ football teams in this country.
“We play about 20 matches a season, but players get disheartened when we cannot find grounds to play on, or referees, or linesmen, to officiate.”
In 1962, when Accrington Stanley was suffering its serious financial pressures, the Wanderers agreed to play a game at Peel Park to help raise money, but the FA stepped in and refused permission.
A number of the team were ‘clippies’ on Accrington Corporation buses.
Were you a member of the team, or do you have a team photograph of the Wanderers?
