Bella getting the big stage she deserves

WARTIME SENSATION HONOURED IN PLAY

JACKIE MILBURN is a glorious beacon in Newcastle United’s history, a legend around whom tales of great derring-do abound.

But actually before Wor Jackie, the pit lad from Ashington, became a No.9 icon there was Wor Bella just down the road in Blyth.

Bella Reay is to women’s football in the North East what Milburn is to the traditional men’s game. A Geordie who was a relentless scorer of goals and became part of folklore.

However, Bella had over the years been buried in the long distant past, forgotten and airbrushed from history, before Tyneside playwright Ed Waugh unearthed her story and turned it into a fascinating and successful play which is about to hit the big time of the Theatre Royal. It will run this April on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28.

Wor Bella, an 18-year-old from Cowpen who joined Blyth Spartans Ladies, scored an astonishing 133 goals in 30 matches. Even Wor Jackie would have doffed his cap at those unimaginable figures.

If women’s football has of recent times soared in popularity it was actually hugely supported in the years round the First World War.

When male military conscription was introduced in 1916 after the bloody slaughter of Ypres and later Passchendaele, hundreds of thousands of women flooded into the munitions factories to save the WWI war effort.

The “munitionettes” (a cohort of 800,000 by 1918) worked long, hard, dangerous and physical 60-hour weeks in shipyards, armaments factories, docks, rope mills, steel mills etc and yet still found the energy to play football to raise money for maimed and blinded soldiers, widows and orphans.

The men’s game had been suspended in 1915 and some of the 7,000 professional footballers joined the armed forces while others entered the domestic workplace. Many of them helped train the women and organised the games as secretaries or match officials.

Newcastle United’s legendary defender Bill Mccracken, who was so influential that he forced a change in the offside law, was one of them. He signed for Newcastle from Belfast Distillery in 1904, going on to make 377 appearances for the club up to 1923.

A local superstar, he was a wartime factory worker when the men’s game closed down and was instrumental in WWI North East women’s football. Mccracken organised matches

The fascinating story of Blyth Spartans Ladies goal-getter Bella Reay is being told at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal in April

and refereed games throughout the region including the very first recorded wartime match on February 3, 1917 involving Wallsend Slipway and North East Marine (Wallsend).

However, while hundreds of women’s sides were formed throughout the UK there were no leagues but the North East was unique in that teams competed for a trophy, the Alfred Wood Cup donated by a Sunderland businessman.

Ed Waugh explains: “The 1918 Munitionettes final was on March 30

United legend Bill Mccracken was a staunch supporter of women’s football in the North East during the First World War

between Blyth Spartans Ladies and Bolckow Vaughan from Middlesbrough. The match was at St James’ Park and attracted 18,000 people. It ended in a 0-0 draw.

“The replay six weeks later was held at Middlesbrough’s Ayresome Park and saw Blyth Spartans win 5-0 in front of a crowd of 22,000. Bella Reay scored a hat-trick.”

It was Mccracken who enlisted the support of his pre-war colleague, Toon centre-forward Bob Pailor, to referee the first final at St James’ Park.

Despite its growing popularity, women’s football took an almost fatal blow when the war ended in November 1918, causing the munitionettes to be thrown out of work to accommodate returning war veterans.

By December of 1921 the Football Association had scandalously banned women’s football, a terrible wrong that was not righted until 1971.

Catherine Dryden, who has been performing with Jimmy Nail at Newcastle’s Live Theatre, will play Bella in the one-hander. Hailing from Chester-le-street, she has toured No.1 venues nationally with The Pitmen Painters and The Play That Goes Wrong.

■ WOR BELLA plays an out-of-town run at the Bread and Roses Theatre, Clapham, London (April 22 to 24), before transferring to Newcastle’s Theatre Royal.

Tickets can be purchased at www. theatreroyal.co.uk or from the Theatre Royal Box Office on 0191 232 7010.

Wor Bella scored an astonishing 133 goals in 30 matches. Even Wor Jackie would have doffed his cap...