First recorded women’s match branded as ‘insolence on the Sabbath’

In the middle of the quiet village green stand two traffic cones. They serve as a makeshift set of goalposts.

But, with children back at school, there is no-one playing football.

Rose Reilly, arguably Scotland’s most successful female footballer, can feel the presence of the past, though. The nation’s only World Cup winner is in Carstairs where a local kirk minister’s objection to women playing football on the sabbath provides the earliest recorded evidence of women’s football being played in Europe.

“It is quite an honour to be here because I didn’t know that the first female football match was at Carstairs.,” she said.

“It actually gave me goosebumps to think I might be standing on the same pitch where the first recorded female game in Europe was played.

“I would just like to know what did they wear. Were they all covered up? Did they have hats on? In those days there were so many taboos for ladies, so how did it happen?”

The basic translation of the transcript, from the Presbytery of Lanark Registers, does not offer up such detail but, dated 21 August, 1628, it reveals that “Mr John Lindsay, minister at Carstairs, having regret- ted the break of the Sabbath by the insolent behaviour of men and women, in footballing, dancing and Barley Breaks [an old English country game], ordains every Brother [Minister] to labour to restrain the foresaid insolence and break of Sabbath and, to that effect, make intimation thereof into their several kirks next Sabbath day.”

On what historians believe is the same spot where such insolence was observed, Reil- ly and Aileen Campbell MSP, along with Karen Grunwell marked the 390th anniversary of the first recorded women’s football by announcing that the inaugural seminar on women’s football in Scotland will be held at Hampden Park on 8 March, 2019 – International Women’s Day.

“We have moved forward a bit since 1628,” said Reilly. “We are getting there. But there is still a way to go.”