A newly restored piece of film brings back one of the earliest surviving records of women’s football. Sterling Ladies FC and Vickers Crayford Athletic Club. Played on April 20, 1918, at Chalkwell Park in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
The footage has been rebuilt frame by frame in 4K colour. With a new soundtrack added to bring the crowd and the pitch back to life. Therefore it is a substantial improvement on an earlier colourisation attempt from 2021. Now made possible by newer restoration tools. Also, I have much more information now about this pioneering women’s football 1918 match.
Who was playing
Vickers Crayford, in white tops and dark shorts, were made up of women working at the Vickers engineering firm. From Dartford they produced guns, artillery, ships and planes during the war. Sterling Ladies FC of Dagenham, wore white and navy tops with dark shorts. They were drawn from workers at the Sterling Telephone & Electrical Company. Locally they were known as The Invincibles.
Sterling’s star centre-forward, Maud Smith, had scored 38 goals out of the team’s 103 in the previous season. She can be picked out in the restored film by her white bobble hat, which she keeps adjusting throughout. The goal captured on camera in this particular reel was scored by Sterling player A. Tennyson.
What the newspapers said
The match was reported in The Sportsman on Tuesday, April 23, 1918. The paper described a game played in aid of three war hospitals at Southend. Noting that several thousand spectators turned out at Chalkwell Park to watch the two undefeated sides. Dunn’s goalkeeping for Vickers was singled out as a feature of the game. Sterling opened the scoring through A. Tennyson, Vickers equalised through an own goal, O. Wood then put Vickers ahead, and Tennyson levelled again for Sterling just before half-time. Neither side could add to the score in the second half, and the match ended in the 2–2 draw the film shows.
Not quite the first ever filmed women’s football
Long believed to be the earliest surviving film of a women’s football match, that that claim has since been revised. Historian Stephen Bolton has identified an earlier film of The Invincibles from 1917. The Sterling–Vickers match goes into second place in the record books. However it remains one of the oldest such recordings known to exist. It is twenty seconds longer than the 1917 film and it shows some real tactical football being played.
The wider story of wartime women’s football
With so many men away fighting, women stepped into the factories and, in their off hours, onto the football pitch. These teams of “munitionettes” offering a rare source of cheer during a grim period of the war. Their shorts drew disapproving comment at the time, though attitudes toward women’s expanding role in society were shifting as the war went on.
The best-remembered of these teams today are the Dick, Kerr Ladies of Preston, named after the munitions factory where they worked, and the Sterling Dagenham Invincibles. Dick, Kerr Ladies dominated the north of England. Sterling Ladies FC held the same position in the south, finishing the war undefeated. Sterling played 36 matches in total, winning 34 and drawing 2 – the Vickers game among them. They disbanded in 1919, shortly after the war ended.
Women’s Football after WW1
Dick, Kerr Ladies took a different path. The Football Association banned women’s teams from its grounds in 1921, judging the game “unsuitable for females.” Dick, Kerr Ladies continued anyway, touring internationally and playing on until 1965, racking up 828 matches. The FA ban stood until 1969. Sterling’s early retirement meant they faded from public memory far more quickly. It has taken the work of modern historians to bring their record back into view.
I hope my restoration of this rare 1918 women’s football match contributes to this revival.
With thanks to Stephen Bolton, whose research on the Dagenham Invincibles informed this piece, and to Patrick Brennan for his pictorial history of early women’s football. Original footage: Gaumont Revy, 1918, via Europeana.
That’s all ! © Glamourdaze