The forgotten story of ... the Dick, Kerr's Ladies football team

With the England women's team set to play in tomorrow's Euro 2009 final, and on the verge of a double with the world champion England women's cricket team unlikely ever to be matched by their male counterparts, it is an apposite time to revisit the feats of the first great British women's football team.

(I am a slouch when it comes to hyperlinking, if that's the term, but people wishing to read more, or indeed check my sources, should visit the wonderful website www.dickkerrladies.com, where Gail Newsham has compiled an exhaustive biography of the most successful women's football team in the world, and there is an excellent article by Chris Hunt, from which I have drawn heavily, at www.chrishunt.biz.)

Let me tell you a story ...

Britain is at war against the Kaiser, morale is low in the factories, output is falling, something must be done. "Let's play soccer," suggests someone, who if he had been born a century later would surely have become a management consultant. This was a call which was doubly heeded at the Dick, Kerr and Co ammunitions factory in Preston. The men took up the challenge. The women took up the challenge.

The men played the women and lost. Little did they know that they were being watched from a window above by an office administrator and big ideas man, Alfred Frankland, who mused to himself, "I tell you what, this lot could fill Deepdale," (the women, that is).

He wasn't wrong. Dick, Kerr's beat Arundel Coulthard Factory 4-0 on Christmas Day 1917 in front of a crowd of 10,000. "Dick, Kerr's were not long in showing that they suffered less than their opponents from stage fright, and they had a better all-round understanding of the game," read a not at all patronising report in the Daily Post. "Their forward work, indeed, was often surprisingly good, one or two of the ladies showing quite admirable ball control."

A dream was born. Stars of the team included ...

Florrie Redford: She's blonde, she's glam, she's Dick, Kerr's No9. The conscience of the dressing room.

Lily Parr: Tricky left-winger. "A 15-year-old with a kick like a Division One back" – The Daily News. Later, playing at Chorley, she would demonstrate this to be true by breaking a professional goalkeeper's arm with a shot struck from the edge of the area with minimal back-lift. Would score more than 900 career goals.

Jennie Harris: Inside-left. A diminutive 4ft 10in, she was the munition factory side's "box of tricks". The wizardess of the dribble.

Alice Kell: Captain. Quality full-back but equally at home at centre-forward (see second-half hat-trick against St Helens Ladies at Goodison in 1920 in front of 53,000 baying spectators, with 14,000 locked out).

Jessie Walmsley: Centre-half with a big, infectious smile. A sort of female Jackie Charlton, if that is not too alarming.

This factory side was deftly improved by Frankland, who would tempt underage girls to Preston with cunning offers of employment topped up with paid-for leave. The policy worked. There was no one who could touch the Dick, Kerr's, who always took to the field in their trademark bubble hats. "Pop" Frankland and his girls needed a new challenge. "I tell you what," he mused to himself, "this lot couldn't half murder the French."

He invited them over. The press were there to greet them at Dover. "Tell me about the Lancashire girls," Madelaine Bracquemond said to them. "They are big, strong and powerful, n'est-ce pas?"

"Come again, Madelaine," replied the 1920s forerunner of Brian Woolnough.

Pop's predictions held up once again. The DK's beat the French 2-0 at Deepdale, 5-2 in Stockport and enjoyed the better of a 1-1 draw at Manchester's Hyde Road. But then, in the game that would make them stars of Pathe and beyond, they were required to play outside Lancashire. In London, of all places. At Stamford Bridge.

It was not just a clash of cultures but a clash of styles. Here's Barbara Jacobs: "The little French women were completely different from these big Lancastrian women. The French were petite and they walked on to the pitch to Le Marseillaise with their arms by their sides and swivelling their hips. They were all small but perfectly formed. This little French team walking on like mannequins, while the big Lancashire women came running out of the tunnel kicking in."

Confusingly, the mannequins packed quite a punch and Harris, all 4ft 10in of her, was knocked unconscious early on. Down to 10 women they lost 2-1. "Of course we didn't underestimate them," said Kell, speaking in the tunnel in front of a "Drink Absinthe" hoarding after the match. "Or allow them to win, but we didn't put in the 'last ounce' as you might say."

They recovered by beating the Rest of Britain 9-1 in the their next game. Not the least of the achievements of the DK's was that, in the days before premium phone lines, all of their money really did go to charity. They worked hard making munitions and then they played hard raising money for soldiers injured by munitions.

As is often the case, they turned out to be too good for their own good. On 5 December, 1921, the FA, conscious that its male players were less easy on the eye and less generous with the pocket, banned women's football on Football League grounds. The minutes of the meeting read: "Complaints have been made as to football being played by women, the Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged ... blah, blah, blah." The ban would last 50 years.

"There's always America," mused Frankland and over the pond went the Dick, Kerr's. Playing largely against men, they lost only three matches out of nine. "I played against them in 1922," recalled top stopper of his day Pete Renzulli. "We were national champions and we had a hell of a job beating them."

Back in Blighty, times had changed. Dick, Kerr's had become English Electric and in 1926 they parted company with Frankland. A mistake, one would think, because Frankland's managerial record with the DK's (P 752, W 703, D 33, L 16) has only one 20th-century rival, and that is the Harlem Globetrotters.