You can find more info here.

I haven’t got time to write anything, so please excuse my self-indulgence in using something I wrote on my personal blog in October 2011. It’s for a good cause!

Looking forward to Monday night. I hope lots of people will support the ladies.

I am never one to refuse the chance of making a gratuitous reference to my beloved Ipswich Town, but this is about the history of women’s football in England generally, so the Ipswich bit – having occurred in the 1950s – will have to wait until the end.

Like most people, I don’t know much about women’s football, although I watch some international matches and Arsenal Ladies beating whoever-it-is in the FA Cup Final every year. In 2007, however, I saw a fascinating BBC documentary about  the history of women’s football. Focusing on the famous Dick Kerr’s Ladies team, it showed rare, flickering black-and-white images of women’s football in the early part of the 20th century. I had known nothing about this: proper football matches played between proper teams. Some of the matches had been watched by massive crowds. On Boxing Day 1920, Dick Kerr’s Ladies beat St. Helen’s Ladies 4-0. The attendance was 53,000.

That date, 1920, is significant. Only a year later the FA decided to ban women from playing football on Football League grounds. “The game,” they pronounced was “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” The decline in the women’s game was dramatic and it never fully recovered, although it has been revived in the 21st century, thanks to interest in the United States and other parts of the world.

In Britain, people still talk of women’s football as something that is novel and a little bit odd. However, references to women playing football appear to go back a long way. Sir Philip Sidney mentions women playing footie in one of his poems, A Dialogue Between Two Shepherds (c.1580), and, yes, girls, it looks as if they tucked their skirts into their knickers back in Tudor times too:

“A tyme there is for all, my mother often sayes,

When she, with skirts tuckt very hy, with girles at football playes.”

In 1894, the Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle heralded the developments in the women’s  game: “Female football teams will shortly contest in public. Women played football in this country centuries ago. Mr. Pepys complains of the nuisance in the Strand, when milkmaids kicked the ball about on May-day, as was their immemorial privilege [my italics].” Sadly the newspaper ruins everything by adding the inevitable comment: “It was not an edifying practice even then.”

The 1880s and 1890s saw some interest in women’s football, but newspaper reports were generally negative describing matches between teams made up of the “softer sex” and indulging in the usual rhetoric about scratching and unnatural aggression. Even attendance at football matches played by men was under scrutiny, for example, this writer in the Derby Mercury, 15th March 1893, believed: “”Women undoubtedly lose their influence over and attraction for men when they dispossess themselves of their womanly attributes; and girls who constantly attend football matches, and think nothing of seeing their own and other people’s brothers and cousins maimed, most assuredly do so.”

Women’s football, despite being popular as a spectator sport, came in for criticism in the press right from the start. The organised women’s game began in 1895 with a North vs. South match. The North, predictably, won 7-1. The usually liberal Ipswich Journal writing about the match stated that “it seems as if we have reached the climax of fin de siècle enormities when we read of the formation of a British Ladies’ Football Club…” and it was patronisingly described in the Times (25th March 1895):

“A match, under Association rules, between teams of ladies was played at Nightingale-lane, Hornsey,  on Saturday… Great curiosity was aroused and the ground was thronged by 7,000 people. The football was of a very harmless nature, and its novelty soon grew irksome to many of the spectators.”

The same newspaper continued in the same vein in May 1920 for its report on the England vs France women’s international, introducing (for the times, at least) a sexual frisson with a rather fanciful preamble about a boy (a young Sepp Blatter, perhaps) spying on some schoolgirls playing football in a cathedral close (!):

“The fortunate youth who penetrated these mysteries was all unconscious of attending the birth of the new woman  – he was much too intent on the spectacle. Was he not enjoying one of the few privileges of which Woman does not apparently propose to deprive his sex  – that of watching her insist on doing what a Man does better?”

The Times does go on to briefly describe the actual international match at Stamford Bridge, which France won 2-0. The writer is even good enough to admit that the players “exhibited enough skill to disappoint those who had come to laugh,” but is more enthused by the French women’s short light blue jumpers.

So why did the FA ban women in 1921? My guess is that it was part of a wider move to put women back in the home after the First World War. In the same year, Bath City Ladies had played in a match in Manchester to raise money for ex-servicemen, but ex-servicemen needed jobs and women were required to return to more traditional roles. It was time for society to re-invent what was considered to be appropriate behaviour for a woman. In 2008, the FA apologised for the ban and the statement that football was “unsuitable” for women.

So, to go back to the title of this piece. It’s taken from an article written by Dingle Foot, former MP for Ipswich, and published in the Times in 1978. He was writing about his memories of Sir Alf Ramsay’s great team, of course, but was also looking forward to the FA Cup Final that Ipswich Town were about to play – and win – against Arsenal. In the article, he recalled a revival of the women’s game in Suffolk when he was the local MP:

“… the rise of Ipswich did not end there. The girls began to play. They attracted immense attention. At their first match they refused to obey the referee as they played another ladies team from rural Suffolk.” They appealed to their Member of Parliament. All he could come up with was a Kiplingesque poem:

It’s goodbye to Jacky Milburn and salute the rising sun

McGarry’s come to put the Town back in Division One

But compared with Ipswich Ladies even Portman Road must fail

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

…

The girls have sacked their manager for all the world to see

‘Twas he who sinned against the light: he backed the referee

No ode will now be written to Mr. Nightingale

For the female of the species is much rougher than the male.

So here by Orwell’s flowing tide Britannia’s flag unfurls

To show in Wolsey’s ancient town that girls will still be girls

Down with the ref, up with the chicks, oh great Minerva, hail

The Ipswich ladies footballers submit to no mere male.

Two days after this poem appeared in the local paper, Dingle Foot received a letter from the captain of the Ipswich ladies’ team assuring him of their full support in the election. He held his seat. “No doubt,” he wrote, “this was due to the Ipswich ladies. In the end the girls always win.”

He took Ipswich Town Football Club from the Third Division to become champions of the Football League in 1962 and, of course, was the only manager of the England national side to win the World Cup in 1966.

He was one of the greatest ever managers in English football – and he was ours.

RIP, Alf.

  TO PURCHASE BY MUTUAL CONSENT, PLEASE CLICK HERE

You can now buy print copies by mail order online using Paypal. Once your payment has been received, we will send a copy to the address you specify as soon as possible. U.K. only.

Price: £2.20  (£1.00 plus £1.20 p.&p.)

We think that this is a great idea. We wrote something about the high ticket prices – especially for away fans – at Portman Road in March: http://wp.me/p2KvgD-4j

You can sign the petition here and find out more about it here.

Milan, Sat 6th April 2013 C/O Centro sportivo Vittorio Pozzo

1st ITFC ITALIAN BRANCH TROPHY

ITFC ITALIAN BRANCH, ITALIAN CELTS, PNE GIGLI BIANCHI SUPPORTERS

K.O. 3.00 PM

TEAMS:

ITFCIB: 1 Fabio Cardillo Piccolino (GK), 2 Claudio Longo, 3 Daniele Longo, 5 Simone Longo (CAP), 7 Giacomo Grossoni, 11 Frank Ferrari, 13 Luca Capellini, 14 Davide Casati, 23 Francesco Caldarola.

IT. CELTS: Pietro Redaelli (GK), Alessandro Girola (CAP), Giuseppe Maiorana, Mathias Grandin, Danilo Filipas, Fabio Rinaldi, Stefano, Alessandro Boretti (PRES).

PNE GBS: Luca Mereghetti (GK), Mirko Dalla Rosa, Marco Soler (CAP), Francesco Sordamaglia, Mauro Stevan, Paolo Savi, Alberto Pagno.

THE MATCHES:

PNE GBS                                   7 – 2                ITALIAN CELTS

Mirko Dalla Rosa (2)                                     Giuseppe Maiorana

Alberto Pagno (2)                                          Fabio Rilanldi

Marco Soler

Luca Mereghetti

Francesco Scordamaglia

 ITFCIB                                          6 – 0                    ITALIAN CELTS

Simone Longo (4)

Davide Casati (2)

 ITFCIB                                          4 – 1                    PNE GBS     

                                          (After Penalties)

                                                     (1 – 1)

Davide Casati                                                        Paolo Savi

 TABLE:

*win after penalties = 2 points

*lost after penalties = 1 point

 GOAL SCORER:

THE CHAMPIONS: (ABOVE FROM THE LEFT) the mascot Michael Ferrari, Simone Longo, Giacomo Grossoni, Claudio Longo. Luca Capellini, Fabio Cardillo Piccolino, Davide Casati, Daniele Longo, Frank Ferrari.

TOURNAMENT DOMINATORS: (ABOVE FROM THE LEFT) Luca Capellini (decisive penalty), Simone Longo (top scorer), Fabio Cardillo Piccolino (best GK), Davide Casati (top assistman).

Great fair play, great atmosphere for share and enjoy our passion for football all together in friendship!!!

1. Ipswich Town’s 2012 detailed accounts have been published: £16.0m loss is much higher than 2011 loss of £3.2m #itfc https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/320087166187339776/photo/1

2. #itfc £16.0m loss was 3rd largest in Championship in season 2011/12, only surpassed by Leicester £29.7m and West Ham £25.5m.

3. #itfc 2012 £15.0m revenue down 13% from £17.2m in 2011, reflecting lower attendances (19,615 to 18,232) and no Carling Cup run (SF in 2011).

4. #itfc 2012 revenue £15.0m (2011 £17.2m): gate receipts £5.4m (2011 £6.6m), TV £5.0m (2011 £5.5m), commercial £4.7m (2011 £5.1m).

5. #itfc 2012 profit on player sales £0.2m much lower than 2011 £10.8m (included sale of Connor Wickham to Sunderland & Jon Walters to Stoke).

6. #itfc 2012 staff costs held at £18.0m (2011 £17.6m), though wages to turnover ratio increased from 102% to 119%.

7. #itfc 119% wages to turnover ratio one of highest in Championship: Bristol City 157%, Leicester 130%, Boro 119%, Forest 119%, Cardiff 103%.

8. #itfc sold their training ground land to owner Marcus Evans for £1.3m (profit £0.5m) during the year. Annual rent of £40,000 will be paid.

9. #itfc 2012 gross debt rose £5.9m to £72.5m (2011 £66.6m) – almost all of this is owed to various Marcus Evans’ companies.

10. #itfc £3.5m interest payable is 2nd highest in Championship (only behind Leicester £5.3m), tho’ it is not actually paid, just added to debt.

11. #itfc also signed a five-year sponsorship agreement in May 2008 with Marcus Evans for a sum of £1.5m.

12. If #itfc promoted to PL, club would have to pay £10.2m to “players, coaches, staff, players’ former clubs, ST holders & loan note holders”.

We recommend Town fans follow @SwissRamble on Twitter and read his blog: http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/

FOOTNOTE: Turnstile Blues also note  that the training ground was sold to Marcus Evans Guernsey, which is handily outside the auspices of Companies House.

The latest issue of our fanzine, By Mutual Consent, is now available to download here.

Please make a donation to our chosen charity, if you are able to.

These are my personal views which aren’t representative of the Turnstile Blues group as a whole.

The news that the overrated Martin O’Neill has been sacked by Sunderland has meant that the Keyser Söze of modern football, Paolo DiCanio – a relatively recent addition to the managerial Usual Suspects – has been touted as his replacement.

Di Canio is a self-confessed fascist and admirer of Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader, describing him as a “principled person [who was] … much misunderstood.”

Fascism is a misused word and it’s not appropriate to discuss its meaning here, but it’s an ideology that is diametrically opposed to everything I believe in. Since Di Canio became a football manager at Swindon Town in 2011, I have often wondered how I would feel if he was appointed as manager of my football club. I have been forced to conclude that I wouldn’t be able to continue to support Ipswich Town although I’d return when he – inevitably – parted company with us. Of course, I don’t think it will happen. I hope it never does.

Thinking about this has brought a further question to the forefront of my mind. Is there anything else that could be a “last straw” when it comes to supporting Ipswich Town? Is there something – anything – that would make it simply impossible for me to carry on as a fan or would I persuade myself otherwise?

To be honest, it’s an issue that has been placed on the back burner since Mick McCarthy came to manage our team. What’s not to like about MM, after all? Ever since Jim Magilton brought Ben Thatcher into the side, however, I’ve been concerned about how far I would allow myself to equivocate. With Thatcher, I convinced myself that his reputation for thuggish behaviour – he was notorious for the vicious elbowing of an opposition player when he was at Manchester City – was something that we could not afford to be fussy about. He had, after all, apologised in writing to Mendes for his actions and Town sorely needed some toughness on the pitch at that time. Anyway, I told myself, I was probably just prejudiced by his name.

Paul Jewell brought other players in that I was not happy with, Lee Bowyer being one. I’d disliked him for all kinds of reasons to do with his behaviour, on and off the pitch. Yet again, I convinced myself that it was all right. After all, I believe that human beings can reform and redeem themselves. The actions that people take when they’re young are often foolish and not the result of deep-seated character flaws. I sought out newspaper articles that seemed to show that he was indeed a reformed character.

Once again, I found myself altering my values in order to accommodate a player or manager just because they were part of my club.

So I began to wonder exactly who I might object to. Who – if anyone – was such an affront to my personal morality that I wouldn’t be able to convince myself that it was all right? Marlon King springs immediately to mind. A talented player who was sentenced to eighteen months in prison in 2009 for sexual assault and grievous bodily harm against women, the court case revealed he had a history of similar behaviour. I often wonder whether the chants by opposition fans against him that are heard up and down the country now that he has returned to football are because those supporters actually detest what he did – or whether those same fans would – quite literally – change their tune if their own club signed him? Get behind the lads and all that.

There are several other examples of footballers and managers who have convictions for domestic violence or other criminal offences which make them seem pretty reprehensible to me. Generally, I’m not very interested in people’s private lives and I don’t like to be judgemental, but when it comes to racism or violence I feel that a line should be drawn. After all, what we’re actually saying here, by tolerating such behaviour, is that football’s more important. More important than racism, more important than violence against women, more important than ethics.

We continue to excuse players simply because they’re good at football.

Ched Evans, now serving a prison sentence for rape, is a good footballer. What would I do should Ipswich Town sign him upon his release? One look at the #justiceforChed hashtag on Twitter was enough for me but it’s a clear example of how our passion for football can overrule our logic. It’s not just moral relativism, it’s a form of self-deception. I’ve been guilty of it, but hopefully only to a lesser extent. I hope I could still do the right thing, despite my addiction to Town. Sometimes I wonder.

Away from individuals, I also wonder about other things that would perhaps be a turning point for me. In modern football, where teams can be owned by people who aren’t either knowledgeable or particularly interested in the game, stadia can be sold or moved, or renamed. Perhaps it won’t be very long until teams in the English leagues are named after their sponsors as they are in other parts of the world. I think that many fans would accept it as being part of the reality of the 21st-century game. Once again, I ask myself how much would I be willing to put up with before I decided to go and watch Stowmarket or Needham Market instead.

Of course, it’s necessary to adapt to the modern world. The game’s come a long way since the 19th century and the era of the Corinthian spirit – a leading light amongst those players, incidentally, was W. M. Cobbold, from Long Melford in Suffolk, apparently known as “The Prince of Dribblers.” The age of the amateur footballer and the public school ethos is thankfully long gone. It’s a mistake, anyway, to imagine that those amateurs were the only people who had a monopoly on fair play and decency.

Money has changed the game so much that many supporters seem to feel that winning, at all costs, is everything. I’m not sure that winning with a team or a manager that I had no respect for would feel very much like winning at all.

PLUS HERE’S A COLLECTOR’S ITEM FOR YOU TO DOWNLOAD: A FREE CUT-OUT-AND-KEEP MARK “CLEM” CLEMMIT HORROR MASK!

With a new fanzine, By Mutual Consent, set to hit the streets of Ipswich on Saturday, we asked top reporter and friend of the stars, Mark “Clem” Clemmit from the Football League Show, to find out more by talking to its creators. Here’s his exclusive report…

CLEM: “Well today I’m here in IPSWICH, and as you’ll have noticed I’ve SHOUTED the name of the place that I’m in, as I always seem to do, as though the very existence of towns other than the one I come from is a constant source of surprise to both me and the viewers. I’m here to talk to the people behind a brand new fanzine, By Mutual Consent, which will be on sale prior to Saturday’s home game against LEEDS (look, I did it again).

“And here they are – the By Mutual Consent team! Guys! Guys! Hey, over here! It’s me! Great to see you again! It’s been too long! How are you?”

BY MUTUAL CONSENT: “We’ve never met before”.

CLEM: “Ha! Such jokers you guys! Listen, tell me about this new fanzine, while I lean too far into the lens like a man still trying to figure out how the camera works”.

BMC: “It’s a new Ipswich fanzine which has been put together by the same people who previously brought out Turnstile Blues earlier this season. The title comes from the fact that so many players (and one manager) have left Ipswich apparently “by mutual consent” over the last couple of seasons. And also because the theme of the fanzine is ownership and stakeholding – whose club is it anyway? That sort of thing. Sorry, am I confusing you?”

CLEM [looking blank]: “So you say it’s a fanzine, and it’s about Ipswich?”

BMC: “Yes, it’s very much an Ipswich fanzine. Do you need me to draw a diagram?”

CLEM: “Ha ha! Always messing around, you guys!”

BMC: “Look, is there any chance you could stand just a bit further away? This is starting to feel like some kind of nightmarish version of The BFG.”

CLEM [moving closer]: “Well listen, I’ve known you guys a long time…”

BMC: “I’m quite sure we’ve never met”

CLEM: “…and I know you’ll have put simply loads of stuff into this fanzine. What stuff? Tell me more about the stuff that’s in the fanzine. What stuff have you got in there?”

BMC: “Do you mean content?”

CLEM: “Yeah! Content and stuff”

BMC: “Uh, OK. Well there are some articles that Ipswich fans will hopefully find entertaining and funny. We’ve got some spoof adverts which link to the title of the fanzine, and also a few other satirical and – let’s be honest – fairly silly things in there which we hope will be amusing. We’ve also got some in-depth writing on subjects linked to the overall theme of the fanzine – the ownership of Ipswich Town, the relationship between the football club and the official supporters’ club, and some perspectives from elsewhere, including Wimbledon and Greece”.

CLEM: “Wimbledon isn’t in Greece”.

BMC: “Wimbledon AND Greece. Not Wimbledon in Greece”.

CLEM: “Oh man. You crack me up you guys. So listen, where can the fans of Ipswich get hold of this Ipswich fanzine?”

BMC: “It’ll be on sale around the ground from around 2pm on Saturday – you’ll find our sellers at the main entrance on Constantine Road as well as by the Sir Alf and Sir Bobby statues. We’ll also be going round a few pubs near the ground. If you can’t make it on Saturday, we’ll make some copies available on eBay shortly afterwards – details will be on the Turnstile Blues website and via the @Turnstile_Blue Twitter feed. We will make an online edition available later in the week, and if anyone downloads that we’d be very grateful for them to make a donation to the LegalWise Soweto Hope Academy in exchange.”

CLEM: “Great stuff. Well listen, best of luck with it, and let’s get together for a beer soon?”

BMC: “Please stop touching me”.

One of the first things I learned in football journalism school was to expect criticism.

‘Clueless’, ‘gutter journalism’, ‘talking b******s’ were some of the many barbs directed at me – and that was just from Paul Jewell!

At the start, I had to placate my wife not to jump to my defence. Feisty one, she is. But it soon dawned on me that any backlash simply underlined why I love football.

Every supporter of every club has an opinion and everyone is entitled to that opinion. It would be a boring game if we all agreed that Lee Martin lacked an end product or Michael Chopra should do his talking on the pitch. Ah, bad examples, but you get my point.

So when I ended my brief writing hiatus by penning an opinion piece on this very website, it was inevitable that some criticism would come my way.

Tyrone Mings’ incredibly gracious gesture – in giving a hard-up Town fan some free tickets – had inspired me to share my thoughts.

But, I wondered, was Mings an exception rather than a rule?

I was too negative, some said, as I questioned whether role models still existed in football. I had allowed the fact that I had fallen a little out of love with football to cloud my judgement, it had been suggested.

Things have started to change. Problems remain at Portman Road, a number of them, but I have started to become more interested in Frank Nouble’s hamstring and the reasons behind signing a thirty-something keeper who last played for Aberdeen in January. A relegation scrap certainly refocuses the mind.

The club’s connection with the ordinary fan remains a big concern – something I hope a new Marketing Manager will help address.

But there remains hope and it comes in the shape of a six-minute, 28-second promo video:

http://www.itfc2013.co.uk/

 Asking fans to part with hundreds of pounds to watch football that has been mediocre at best in recent seasons can be a hard sell.

 There are those who will pay the money regardless – the real football fanatics.

 There are others, and I count myself in this number, that just want to see that their club is listening, that it is trying to be part of the community once again.

  The season-ticket promo video won’t win any Oscars – sorry Milts – but for a fleeting six minutes or so, I remembered why I will always be a Town fan.

 Cheesy at times? Of course. But then it should be. But the cast-list was ideal, with Carlos Edwards and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas likeable fellows off-the-pitch, however ‘relaxed’ they seem on it. Throw in a fans’ favourite, Luke Hyam, and one that is catching him up by the day, Tyrone Mings, despite the 20-year-old still not kicking a competitive ball in anger.

 Saluting the simply incredible support of George Stannard was a nice touch…

 … and then there is Simon Milton. The local boy made good who resonates with the everyday supporter. It is clear how much he loves his Ipswich Town.

 The club have realised that Milts plays a key role in relating to supporters – something Mr Evans and his two side-kicks probably never want to aspire to. In all, a massive congratulations to everyone involved. Last year’s ‘Tractor Boy’ promo was slick, but getting back to basics was, in my opinion, an excellent piece of PR but also a good bit of fun aimed at really connecting with supporters. I haven’t been able to say that about Ipswich Town many times in recent years.

 Of course, take a look at the ITFC strand on Twitter and you will find people criticising it. One said it was one of the worst things he had seen in a long time.

 There will always be opinions – and criticism – in football.