Notts County

On 1 March Bradford City’s bantamspast museum will be launching an exhibition on women’s football in Bradford. It will feature the forgotten history of women’s football with five figure crowds in 1921, a fifty-year FA ban right through to the current Bradford City WFC.
The exhibition will be in three parts. Firstly, the golden age of women’s football in the 1920s. When matches against the Preston based Dick Kerr’s Ladies attracted crowds of up to 10,000 to Valley Parade. Two Bradford teams, Manningham Ladies from Lister’s Mill and Hey’s Ladies from the Bradford brewery, raised hundreds of pounds for charity during their matches against Dick Kerr’s.
The next part will focus on the current Bradford City Women’s Football Club and the re-emergence of the women’s game in the 1980s. The Football Association banned women’s football in 1921. The ban effectively killed the women’s game and it wasn’t lifted until 1971.
The game began a slow rebirth. In the late eighties after the Football in the Community scheme had trained girls from local schools, a Bradford City team was formed. The highlight thus far was two years in the Women’s Premier League. They current play home games on Sunday afternoons at Thackley AFC. We hope that the exhibition will help to forge a close relationship between the women’s football club and Bradford City.
The final part of the exhibition will be about women’s experiences of watching matches at Valley Parade. It’s incredible to think that before the rebuilding of the ground in 1986 there was only one women’s toilet in the whole ground. Indeed, in the 1950s women had to leave the ground to use a toilet in a nearby house! What a contrast to today’s facilities.
We need memories and experiences for the exhibition. Please call in at the museum before any home game and ask for David Pendleton. Alternatively, write c/o Bradford City AFC, Valley Parade, Bradford, BD8 7DY, or email dpen@blueyonder.co.uk