Soccer: Women's World Cup and leading domestic leagues
Women’s football has been played in the United Kingdom for over a century, sharing a common history with the men’s game.
In the nineteenth century the sport was relatively widespread, with a Scottish side known as Mrs Graham’s XI being formed in the 1870s. The first game between Mrs Graham’s XI and a team of English women was played in May 1881. A team would then be set up in England, called the British Ladies Football Club, by Nettie Honeyball. The two teams (Mrs Graham’s XI having changed their name to Edinburgh City in 1895) still exist today and remain amongst the most popular and successful women’s football clubs. At this time, the players still used pseudonyms and were under the recurrent threat of being closed down by the English and Scottish FAs.
The sport enjoyed a brief period of heightened popularity after Britain entered the Great War in 1917, with the 1917-18 and 1918-19 seasons of the men’s game being cancelled. Attendances skyrocketed and some teams became so popular that they were deemed a threat to the returning male teams. Crowd trouble was used as an excuse to cancel all women’s games in 1921 and women’s teams were expelled by the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish FAs. As a result, the Ladies Football Association was formed, taking authority for football over the whole United Kingdom (ironically, prefiguring a move that the men’s game would not make for over forty years) and playing the Women’s Challenge Cup from the 1921-22 season.
Played in four conferences (in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland), the winners of each conference went on to a knock out tournament culminating in a grand final. The grand final was, in practice, always contested between an English and a Scottish team, with Preston Ladies and Stewarton Thistle being two successful clubs alongside the traditional powerhouses of BLFC and Edinburgh. The tournament attained a degree of popularity in bohemian circles for its supposed upending of gender roles, with notable members of the Bloomsbury Group such as Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf and Molly MacCarthy being regular attendees at matches.
Once more, global conflict would provide an unexpected boon for the women’s game, with the men’s game once more cancelled at the end of the 1939-40 season. The number of women’s clubs and spectators expanded greatly and, despite a decrease, remained healthy after the return of men’s football in 1946. During this time, the women’s game was highly regarded for its tactical sophistication, with its lower emphasis on physicality resulting in more attractive and tactically innovative play. The game became a home for unconventional thinkers from the men’s game, with Vic Buckingham being perhaps the most famous such ‘refugee.’ Buckingham managed Lewes from 1949 to 1953 (winning the Challenge Cup in 1951-52) before moving to Arsenal, where he would revolutionise the men’s game with his “Total Football.” At the time, the women’s game was also considered more family friendly, with less violence, no sectarianism and smaller, safer grounds. Many regard the influence of the women’s game as being one of the prime catalysts behind Walter Winterbottom’s substantial reforms to the British men’s game after 1958.
The sport expanded progressively until it was finally able to support a whole league of full-time professional clubs beginning in the 1971-72 season. Currently, there are 26 professional clubs in the United Kingdom. These clubs compete in the Challenge Cup, which is divided into the 12-team Premiership and the 14-team Championship. The winner of the Championship is promoted to the Premiership, replaced by the bottom placed team in the Premiership. Both leagues are round-robin leagues with the top four of the Premiership advancing to a play-off competition culminating in the Grand Final. Most clubs are unconnected to men’s teams, with the Arsenal Ladies (founded during the World War and kept alive through Buckingham’s impetus in the 1950s) being a notable exception.
The Challenge Cup is one of the three most prestigious women’s football leagues in the world, along with the All-Nordic Women’s League in the Nordic Union and the American Soccer Championship in the United States. Football has been popular in the countries of the Nordic Union for some time, with there being a women’s league since 1924. The sport developed later in the United States, in comparison with the men’s game, and the ASC would not be established until 1979. Since then, the passage of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution (the so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment’) in 1972 ensured that there has been equal funding and training facilities for men’s and women’s youth and college teams, ensuring that the US national team has had a substantial fitness and conditioning advantage over its competitors.
At international level, the Anglo-Nordic Cup was contested every summer from 1954 to 1986 (with the exception of summers holding a World Cup) between Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and the national teams of the four British Home Nations. From 1986 onwards, the format was changed to the Tri Nations, contested between the United Kingdom, the Nordic Union and Italy. In the western hemisphere, the Inter-American Cup is contested between the national teams of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Both the Tri Nations and the Inter-American Cup are contested every summer where there isn’t a World Cup.
The Women’s World Cup has been played every four years since 1971. The United States has dominated the tournament since the introduction of professionalism in that country, winning five consecutive editions between 1987 and 2003 and having played in every final since 1983. This has prompted some concerns about the competitiveness of the international game, especially following the USA’s 5-0 thrashing of the Nordic Union in the final of the 2011 tournament.
Despite the limited number of nations in which the game is played professionally, women’s football is popular in a number of countries. Polls show that the WSC is the most popular sports league of 4% of the American public, with the league having an attendance of just under 1,000,000 people across all games in the 2020 season. In the Nordic Union, the Women’s All-Nordic League regularly sees larger attendances than the men’s equivalent, helped by the fact that the biggest men’s stars regularly move abroad at an early age. In the UK, the Challenge Cup is regarded as the country’s fourth most popular competition (behind the Premier League, the Rugby Premiership and the International Cricket League but ahead of the domestic cricket County Championship) and total crowds for the 2019-20 season were nearly 750,000.
In the nineteenth century the sport was relatively widespread, with a Scottish side known as Mrs Graham’s XI being formed in the 1870s. The first game between Mrs Graham’s XI and a team of English women was played in May 1881. A team would then be set up in England, called the British Ladies Football Club, by Nettie Honeyball. The two teams (Mrs Graham’s XI having changed their name to Edinburgh City in 1895) still exist today and remain amongst the most popular and successful women’s football clubs. At this time, the players still used pseudonyms and were under the recurrent threat of being closed down by the English and Scottish FAs.
The sport enjoyed a brief period of heightened popularity after Britain entered the Great War in 1917, with the 1917-18 and 1918-19 seasons of the men’s game being cancelled. Attendances skyrocketed and some teams became so popular that they were deemed a threat to the returning male teams. Crowd trouble was used as an excuse to cancel all women’s games in 1921 and women’s teams were expelled by the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish FAs. As a result, the Ladies Football Association was formed, taking authority for football over the whole United Kingdom (ironically, prefiguring a move that the men’s game would not make for over forty years) and playing the Women’s Challenge Cup from the 1921-22 season.
Played in four conferences (in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland), the winners of each conference went on to a knock out tournament culminating in a grand final. The grand final was, in practice, always contested between an English and a Scottish team, with Preston Ladies and Stewarton Thistle being two successful clubs alongside the traditional powerhouses of BLFC and Edinburgh. The tournament attained a degree of popularity in bohemian circles for its supposed upending of gender roles, with notable members of the Bloomsbury Group such as Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf and Molly MacCarthy being regular attendees at matches.
Once more, global conflict would provide an unexpected boon for the women’s game, with the men’s game once more cancelled at the end of the 1939-40 season. The number of women’s clubs and spectators expanded greatly and, despite a decrease, remained healthy after the return of men’s football in 1946. During this time, the women’s game was highly regarded for its tactical sophistication, with its lower emphasis on physicality resulting in more attractive and tactically innovative play. The game became a home for unconventional thinkers from the men’s game, with Vic Buckingham being perhaps the most famous such ‘refugee.’ Buckingham managed Lewes from 1949 to 1953 (winning the Challenge Cup in 1951-52) before moving to Arsenal, where he would revolutionise the men’s game with his “Total Football.” At the time, the women’s game was also considered more family friendly, with less violence, no sectarianism and smaller, safer grounds. Many regard the influence of the women’s game as being one of the prime catalysts behind Walter Winterbottom’s substantial reforms to the British men’s game after 1958.
The sport expanded progressively until it was finally able to support a whole league of full-time professional clubs beginning in the 1971-72 season. Currently, there are 26 professional clubs in the United Kingdom. These clubs compete in the Challenge Cup, which is divided into the 12-team Premiership and the 14-team Championship. The winner of the Championship is promoted to the Premiership, replaced by the bottom placed team in the Premiership. Both leagues are round-robin leagues with the top four of the Premiership advancing to a play-off competition culminating in the Grand Final. Most clubs are unconnected to men’s teams, with the Arsenal Ladies (founded during the World War and kept alive through Buckingham’s impetus in the 1950s) being a notable exception.
The Challenge Cup is one of the three most prestigious women’s football leagues in the world, along with the All-Nordic Women’s League in the Nordic Union and the American Soccer Championship in the United States. Football has been popular in the countries of the Nordic Union for some time, with there being a women’s league since 1924. The sport developed later in the United States, in comparison with the men’s game, and the ASC would not be established until 1979. Since then, the passage of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution (the so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment’) in 1972 ensured that there has been equal funding and training facilities for men’s and women’s youth and college teams, ensuring that the US national team has had a substantial fitness and conditioning advantage over its competitors.
At international level, the Anglo-Nordic Cup was contested every summer from 1954 to 1986 (with the exception of summers holding a World Cup) between Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and the national teams of the four British Home Nations. From 1986 onwards, the format was changed to the Tri Nations, contested between the United Kingdom, the Nordic Union and Italy. In the western hemisphere, the Inter-American Cup is contested between the national teams of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Both the Tri Nations and the Inter-American Cup are contested every summer where there isn’t a World Cup.
The Women’s World Cup has been played every four years since 1971. The United States has dominated the tournament since the introduction of professionalism in that country, winning five consecutive editions between 1987 and 2003 and having played in every final since 1983. This has prompted some concerns about the competitiveness of the international game, especially following the USA’s 5-0 thrashing of the Nordic Union in the final of the 2011 tournament.
Despite the limited number of nations in which the game is played professionally, women’s football is popular in a number of countries. Polls show that the WSC is the most popular sports league of 4% of the American public, with the league having an attendance of just under 1,000,000 people across all games in the 2020 season. In the Nordic Union, the Women’s All-Nordic League regularly sees larger attendances than the men’s equivalent, helped by the fact that the biggest men’s stars regularly move abroad at an early age. In the UK, the Challenge Cup is regarded as the country’s fourth most popular competition (behind the Premier League, the Rugby Premiership and the International Cricket League but ahead of the domestic cricket County Championship) and total crowds for the 2019-20 season were nearly 750,000.