Girl Power

The football greats.

Pele, Maradona, Best, Banks and of course Lily Parr.

What do you mean - who?

Lily Parr played for the Dick, Kerr's ladies team (named after the Preston company that started the team). She scored over 1000 goals in her career with them. The power of her kick was said to equal the power of a man's and indeed it is rumoured she once broke a male goalkeeper's arm with the force of her shot. She was a lefty too.

In addition to being celebrated in the UK Football National Hall of Fame (the first of only 2 women to receive the honour), she now lends her name to the Lily Parr Lesbian Football Cup, played recently as part of the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender) History Month. She has also been eulogised in poetry.

And at last the FA have acknowledged the damage that their 50 year ban on women playing at association grounds (which only ended in 1971) had upon the women's game. It's funny how I grew up in an environment where I was told girls did not do football. Yet as previously reported it is now the fastest growing women's sport in the country.

Which leads me to conclude that either the women at the beginning of centuries are more suited to football than those later on - or the reason girls did not do football during my childhood and adolescence had something to do with male sexism, patriarchy and abuse of power.

What do you think girls?