Secrets of women’s football first star
EVERYONE has forgotten the Alan Shearer of her day. Yes, HER day!
I’m talking about a Geordie lass from Jarrow called Mary Lyons who exactly 100 years ago made footballing history.
The record books will tell you that the youngest player to score for England is Wayne Rooney who, aged 17 years and 317 days, notched in England’s 2-1 victory over Macedonia on September 6, 2003.
History will further insist that Theo Walcott became the youngest international when he appeared in England’s 3-1 friendly win over Hungary at Old Trafford aged 17 years and 75 days on May 30, 2006.
WRONG AND WRONG.
Both feats actually belong to our forgotten Geordie pioneer who at 15 years old made her England debut appropriately at St James’ Park in front of 20,000 of her own folk in 1918 and netted at the end of the first half during a 3-2 win against Scotland. Now a century on Mary Lyons’ inspirational story, The Lyons’ Roar, is to be told by top North East playwright Ed Waugh, the writer of smash hits such as Hadaway Harry, Mr Corvan’s Music Hall, and The Great Joe Wilson. Ed is a fanatical Newcastle United fan and therefore such a forgotten tale of great derring-do is in capable hands. Starring as Mary in this full-length play which will hit the boards in the autumn will be North East actress Viktoria Kay, who has passionately eked out the story of someone who has become her heroine and persuade Waugh to lend his pen to proceedings. “I’ve been determined to see
GEORDIE LASS WAS YOUNGEST TO PLAY FOR COUNTRY
I’ve been determined to see Mary regain her rightful place in history Viktoria Kay
Mary regain her rightful place in history since I first come across some literature by Patrick Brennan about the Munitionettes,” Vik told me. “I’m from a football-mad family and when I was at school in Monkwearmouth I was always banging on about why we hadn’t a girls’ team so my thoughts are very much with her.
“My first acting role was in Roker Roar, a school production of a specially commissioned play which was staged at a football festival in London to coincide with the World Cup.”
So who was Mary, our long lost local heroine?
She was born in 1902 in Jarrow. Her Irish-born parents, Julia and Patrick, had come to South Tyneside as a young married couple.
Despite being a staunch Catholic family, football was their preferred religion and Mary was taught the game by her brother John. Practising from dawn until dusk, her incisive and exquisite footwork quickly drew the attention of friends and neighbours.
After leaving school at 14 with the Great War ravaging Europe, Mary joined Palmers Munitions Factory where bait-time kickabouts led to her being asked to play for Palmers Girls.
Women’s football grew rapidly from 1915 with munitions factories competing against one another. Teams were based in Newcastle, South and North Tyneside, Teesside, Sunderland, and Darlington regularly attracting crowds of 20,000plus with proceeds going to warrelated charities.
Mary’s skills rapidly gained the attention of newspaper sporting columns and in 1918, aged 15, she was poached by the mighty Blyth Spartans – the best woman’s team in the region at the time – for the Munitionettes Cup against Bolckow, Vaughn & Co at Ayresome Park. Mary led Blyth to victory scoring one of their five goals and being voted ‘Woman of the Match.’
In addition, Mary took the Palmers team from a scratch side to the best in the region, bringing The Munitionettes Cup to Jarrow a year later in 1919.
When the war ended and soldiers were demobbed, women were no longer expected to do ‘men’s work’ in the factories nor did the system want them to be independent.
As a consequence women’s football quickly became a shadow of what it was in those heady wartime days.
With no professional outlet for women footballers, the unelected bourgeois gentlemen of the English Football Association banned – yes ‘banned’ – women’s football in 1921. Mary was just 18 years old. Tragically, the ban was not lifted until 1971, 50 years later!
Sadly her inspiring story has a shocking ending.
“In her late 20s, illness confined Mary to a wheelchair and, robbed of her main passion in life, she became embittered and consequently alienated friends and family,” said Viktoria Kay. “She never married and bore no children.”
Hence, when she died in a Jarrow care home on May 29, 1979 tales of her footballing heroics appeared to have been buried with her – until now. Today of course women’s football has enjoyed a great resurgence. In 2017 four million TV viewers watched the England Lionesses in the semi-final of the European Championships with many of the current stars hailing from the North East like Mary.
According to UEFA there are more than 1,270,482 registered female footballers in Europe, more than 100,000 of them British. However, the real trailblazers were the likes of Mary Lyons who helped women find their place in the footballing sun.