Wendy Owen, pioneer of women's football, recalls early sexism – and being told it was a joke

It was the England men’s team victory in the final of the 1966 World Cup that inspired Wendy Owen to play football at every possible moment. She saw no difference between herself and the other kids playing kick-about on the council estate in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where she grew up. Eventually, she would go on to become a member of the first women's England international squad.

"At 11, I would pretend to be Geoff Hurst or Martin Peters – my heroes – in our back garden," she remembers. "I joined my two brothers and their friends playing football on the green in front of the houses. I didn’t really notice I was the only girl."

But that didn't last long. Owen was a pioneer of women’s football, but she had to overcome many obstacles in order to play, simply because of her sex. At the age of 13, she encountered her first hurdle – the Football Association’s ban, dating from 1921, forbidding girls and women from playing on its pitches, prevented her from joining a league team.

"The boys I played with formed a proper team so that they could join a league, and I was excited to be part of it – until I found out that I couldn’t. I was incensed."

But her father, a local youth club leader, resourcefully formed a girls’ league using unregistered referees and pitches. Owen made such an impression that she was invited to join Thame, a club in Oxfordshire. Her father would ferry her on the twice-weekly 50-mile round trip for training and games.

"We played on such rubbish factory pitches that after one winter match we were all completely soaked in mud from head to foot. But there was no changing room, never mind showers. So both teams walked to the local cattle marketplace where there was a hose for washing the livestock and we used that, hosing ourselves down like cattle. It made the local paper and shamed the council into giving us a hut with a basic shower."

After the FA ban was overturned, she was spotted by Eric Worthington, the first England women’s team manager, who included her in the squad for the historic first international in 1972. By then at sports college training to be a PE teacher, Owen had to ask for leave of absence.

"I was advised to wear a skirt for that meeting and had to borrow one as I didn’t own one." She almost didn’t get permission to join what would become such an historically important match. "The college principal, a woman, said to me, 'Surely women playing football is just a joke?' It was one of the male governors who approved it."

The press showed some interest in the England v Scotland match, but it came with a side order of sexism. “We got a bit of media coverage before the game, but they only wanted to know what your boyfriend thought,” says Owen. “Sylvia Gore, who became the first woman to score an international goal for England in the game, said her boyfriend had told her to choose between him and football, so she chose football. The reporter replied: ‘Surely getting married is more important?’

"Our captain Sheila Parker was a mum, and they asked her, 'Who’s looking after your baby?’ Another reporter said to me: ‘Surely women playing football is like men knitting?’ One photographer brought a make-up compact with him and asked me to pose putting on eyeshadow, which I did, even though I never wore it."

But nothing could blunt the thrill of that first historic match, even though as a substitute Owen didn’t get on the pitch. Her first cap came the following year, although it would be half a century before the FA awarded women their actual caps. Until then, Flo Bilton, who was a driving force in the women’s game, handmade their own version.

Ultimately, Owen played 16 times for England until she retired at 26 to become a coach, concerned at having headaches from heading the ball. "I do worry about dementia," she says, musing on the high incidence from that era in the men’s game. "But I’m well. Looking back, I could never have imagined women’s football would reach where it has. I didn’t feel like a pioneer. We just wanted to play football. I don’t envy today’s players because we had no pressure on us."

But the home win in 2022 wouldn’t have happened without those early days of struggle. "When the Lionesses won the Euros, I was shouting and screaming and jumping round my living room, and my phone went mad with texts congratulating me. They all said, 'Without you, it couldn’t have happened.'" And, she concedes: "I suppose that’s true."

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