‘We’re the lassies from Lancashire’: Manchester Corinthians Ladies FC and the use of overseas tours to defy the FA ban on women’s football

Abstract

The FA banned women’s football from the grounds of Association-affiliated clubs in 1921, on the grounds that the organisation perceived that football was ‘unsuitable’ for women and too much money raised for charity had been absorbed in player expenses. But women continued to play. This article analyses how Manchester Corinthians Ladies Football Club, which had been formed in 1949, was able to sustain a varied range of overseas tours and domestic matches in spite of the ban. Using a range of methods, including oral history, family history interviews, a reunion of the surviving players and player memorabilia, firstly, the article provides a history of Corinthians and Nomads from 1949 onwards. Secondly, the article uses oral history to reflect what the players felt about playing for the club and particularly its overseas tours, and charity work. Not all of the players are represented due to constraints of space, but this is an introduction to a larger ongoing project to reclaim the teams’ history. Finally, the article argues that it is important to examine the 1950s and 1960s, decades when women’s football was an unregulated activity, in order to understand that which followed once the FA ban was lifted in 1969.