THE LEGEND
I was passionate about playing. Nothing would stand in my way
She had to cut her hair like a boy and pretend her name was Ross to get on a team but Rose Reilly would have done anything if it meant being able to play football.
That was almost 60 years ago, when Reilly first started out on a career that would lead her to acclaim at both domestic and international level and pave the way for women on the pitch.
It’s only now, as she prepares to be made an MBE for services to women’s football, that the 66-year-old is starting to recognise her place in Scotland’s sporting history books.
“I was passionate about playing and prepared to do what I needed to do,” she said. “I was going to be a professional footballer and nothing was going to stand in my way.”
Ayrshire-born Reilly is set to pick up the accolade at Holyrood Palace in January. Covid restrictions meant the ceremony had to be delayed until 2022.
“When I heard I was being honoured, all I could think was ‘Wow!’,” she said. “I’m so proud, but it’s not a personal honour. I have accepted it on behalf of everyone involved in women’s football. That’s really who it’s for.”
Reilly – who now goes by her married name Peralta – worked her way up the ranks during a 30-year career to play for AC Milan and Scotland but getting to professional level at a time when females weren’t accepted was tough.
“People say it must have been a hardship fighting for recognition in women’s football, but when you have fire in your belly and it’s your passion, you do what you have to do,” said Reilly. “I was physically punished, expelled from school, sacked from my job for playing football in my lunch break but life is all about choices.
“I made that choice and I was standing by it, no matter what. I didn’t care whether I was a girl or boy, I just wanted to play football.”
Reilly’s love of the game stems from when she was a toddler. “When I was about three, I wandered away from home. My parents found me at a football pitch. I was young, but I think I already knew my way.
“I didn’t just have a connection with football, it was a passion, a love.
“My parents didn’t want me to play because, at that time, girls just didn’t. I was one of eight children and the weirdo of the family. All my siblings did as they were told and followed the rules.
“My mum and dad couldn’t understand why a wee lassie wanted to play football.”
In the ’70s there was no way for a woman to become a professional footballer in the UK, so Reilly, at 17, quit her home and headed to Europe to follow her dream.
“I never thought twice,” she said. “There were challenges. I had to learn a new language and stay in a hotel by myself for a year.
“My team-mates didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Italian. And my family didn’t have a phone, so we communicated by airmail.
“I used to talk to myself in the mirror every night, because that was the only person I could have a conversation with.
“But I was determined. I bought a dictionary and learned three words a day and just embraced this time in my life. I never look on these things as difficulties. They helped make me the person I turned out to be.”
A huge hit in Italy’s Serie A, she was asked by the country’s president to play for the Italian national team, a move that led to Reilly winning the
1984 Women’s
World Cup, being named female world footballer of the year, and becoming a household name in her adopted homeland.
Despite retiring from football more than
20 years ago after a career spanning more than three decades, Reilly still champions women’s football. Visiting schools across the country, she shares her story in a bid to encourage young girls to try the sport.
“Even now, women’s football is like a big tree someone planted – but with no roots,” she said.
“There are still stereotypes. It shouldn’t be that football is for boys and dancing is for girls. Kids should be allowed to do whatever they want to do.
“We need to enforce this at a young age by telling girls they can play football too, get into primary schools, get football coaches in there and introduce it at an early age, when the passion grows.
“When they opened the sports centre in my name in my home town of Stewarton, there were 40 wee eight-year-old girls signing up for coaching.
“This is the generation that women’s football can change for.”
Reilly – who ruefully admits her daughter Valentina, 21, chose ballet rather than follow in her footballing footsteps – says the key is to stop comparing the women’s sport to the men’s game.
“I remember when Valentina was about four. I bought her an Italy strip and took her to Little Kickers,” she recalled. “After about five minutes she came over and said she didn’t want to play football any more as the boys were too rough.
“That’s why mixed teams don’t work. Boys football and girls football are two different things. The physical abilities are not the same.
“Girls and women’s teams should be treated as separate.”
She added: “Things are progressing but there’s still work to be done. We need women in the boardrooms as that’s where the decisions are made.
“For so long, it has been men who have decided our fate, and I don’t think that’s right. Women should decide their own destiny.
“We need a women’s SFA. And an injection of money.”