Women's football in England

Women's football has been played in England for over a century, sharing a common history with the men's game as the country in which the Laws of the Game were codified.

Although women's football was originally very popular in the early 20th century, after an almost terminal decline it has only been since the 1990s that the game has seen a large increase in female players, as well as in female spectators, culminating in England hosting the Women's European Championships in 2005.

It is impossible to say at what point women began to play football, just as much of the history of the men's game is uncertain. While medieval football is generally believed to have been a men's game some small evidence does exist that women were occasionally involved, with the 16th century Sir Philip Sidney briefly mentioning it in his poem A Dialogue Betweene Two Shepherds and with a ball formerly in the possession of Mary Queen of Scots believed to be the oldest football still in existence.

As football developed from a disorganised village sport into a codified game with more spectators than players at the end of the 19th century, women's football similarly developed. With women's football in Scotland seemingly more widespread than in England, a team of English women travelled to Edinburgh in May 1881 to play a short series of games against a representative Scottish side led by Helen Graham Matthews, who would end up being a pioneer for women's football south of the border. The matches served as an inauspicious start for women's football, with a riot breaking out among the game's 5,000-odd viewers, spilling onto the pitch, ending the game and shortly thereafter resulting in women being banned from playing the sport in Scotland. The ban did, however, result in Graham Matthews moving to England, where she set up a side known as the Lady Footballers, with assistance from her opposite number during the Edinburgh matches, Nettie Honeyball. Hiding her identity to avoid being linked to the disruption, she went by the name of 'Mrs Graham' until her identity was discovered in 1900.

In this period, it was not only Helen Graham Matthews leading the way for women in football, however. Honeyball herself would found a team in 1894 called the British Ladies' Football Club, a team which would have as its president Lady Florence Dixie, daughter of the 8th Marquess of Queensberry. Evidently a number of other teams existed as the Lady Footballers and the British Ladies Football Club were able to tour England, playing teams across the country. Women footballers in England were not entirely able to operate without prejudice, however, as evidenced in the way many - not least Graham Matthews - elected to play under assumed names to avoid reprisals for their participation.