A Secretary from a Salford Girls Football team have shared their thoughts after the 101 year anniversary since the Football Association banned women’s football in the UK.
Monday the 5th of December marked 101 years since the Football Association banned women’s football in the UK.
The ban would go on to last for 51 years and damaged what was once a thriving women’s game. However, with the Lionesses Euros victory this summer and increased television coverage, women’s football is beginning to make a comeback.
Ronnie Ingram, the secretary of what would be the Girl’s Salford and Districts league from under 7 to under 12’s, said: “As a league we are ready to go, 100 percent, but we’ve got a lot of clubs in Salford set in other, out of area, leagues.”
Ronnie explained that the main reason Salford teams play in other leagues are for competitive reasons, but teams are not giving the league the chance it needs to grow and become more competitive with more teams.
“Parents want their kids to play at the highest level, in order to make our league competitive, you need at least eight teams and two divisions, so they go to other leagues.
“Clubs want competitive football now and haven’t waited for the Salford league to be able to try and grow to make the leagues competitive.
“A lot of those [teams in other leagues] won’t give us a try in order to allow the league to grow. We’ve got so many established leagues outside of Salford and a lot of coaches prefer that. A lot of the parents want to stay in Salford, especially now that we are in a cost-of-living crisis.
“The impact of this is that there is a downturn of girls playing football as they get older. A lot of kids, girls, give up football because they are having to travel to places like Blackpool to play their football.
“When my son first started playing football, you might see one or two girls on a couple of the teams, but as society has progressed, there has been more girls playing for Salford clubs, just not in Salford leagues.”
Finding a solution that works for everyone is difficult when it comes to creating a girl’s football league Ronnie continued: “There are a lot of different preferences, some girls only want to play with other girls, some girls want to play in their mixed team and some want to play in both.”
This difference in preference to play with and against boys while other girls may want to only play with girls means that making a league just for girls will not be appealing for a large amount of the girls that actually do want to play football in Salford.
The Salford Lionesses team are also seeing increased amount of success, with player Lily Robinson nominated for North West rising female star of the year, alongside the likes of Ella Toone and eventual winner Lauren Hemp.
Despite this, Ronnie and the Salford and Districts league will still work hard to try and form a girls league and hope to have teams playing and the league running again soon.
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