Scotland’s Rose celebrates her latest accolade
Rose Reilly’s MBE rewards a ground-breaking career that included a World Cup win,
The Celtic scout who travelled 30 minutes south west of Glasgow to watch a young striker called Ross Reilly was certain he had struck gold. Eight-year-old Reilly – the youngest player in the Stewarton Boys line-up – had just scored eight goals in 80 minutes and the talent spotter was immediately on to the team’s manager: “I would like to sign the wee boy, No7.”
The Stewarton manager paused for a moment before replying: “No, no, that’s a wee girl.”
Ross was, in fact, Rose, and weeks earlier, had been told to take herself – without her mother’s permission – for a short back and sides so she could play undetected. “Celtic kept coming back – ‘no, no, the one that scored all the goals’,” Reilly says. “I eventually spoke to the Celtic scout and I was absolutely gutted. I kept thinking ‘if I was good enough, why couldn’t I play?’” More than half a century later, Reilly has been awarded the MBE for her services to women’s football. As the first and only Scot to lay her hands on a World Cup – or the
Mundialito as it was called in 1984 – many will feel the honour is long overdue. However, Reilly, a trailblazing goal machine whether playing with women or men, is simply grateful for what she had. “I’ve had a lot of accolades but this tops everything,” she said of her honour.
No bitterness from Reilly at the “faceless men in suits” at the Scottish FA who barred her from playing for the national team after she dared to forge a professional career in Serie A’s women’s format. Scotland’s loss became Italy’s gain as her goal-laden years, most notably at the San Siro for AC Milan, earned her a place as the only non-national to play for the Azzurri. Of her starring performance in the World Cup final against West Germany, she smiles: “Why would I not score? I’m not big-headed. I’m just realistic. There was always a Scottish heart beating under an Italian jersey, but it was a very good moment.”
Reilly had always been a sporting all-rounder and, as a teenager, Scottish governing bodies tried to make her quit football and pursue pentathlon.
“I was on the shortlist for the Commonwealth Games for Scotland at about 16,” she said. “I remember having to go to St Andrews for a week’s training with the Scotland team. The coach said I needed to stop playing so much football as I was developing too much thigh muscle. I was getting football legs.”
She managed to quit football for just a week and, refusing to give up on her dream, turned to journalist Stan Shivas at the Daily Record.
“I remember reading the back of the
Daily Record and there was a bit about Real Madrid, foreign teams – I thought to myself ‘maybe there was a female version’. We didn’t have any information. We didn’t have a phone in the house. We didn’t even have a tele. So, having seen the journalist’s name at the bottom, I took the bus to Glasgow. I got to the office and the secretary says to me ‘have you got an appointment’. I didn’t, but I said ‘yes, I’m here to see Stan Shivas’. I went in to his room and he was ever so sophisticated. He was smoking a cigar and I said ‘excuse me, I’m Rose Reilly and I want to be a professional footballer’. He found out there was a team, Stade de Reims, in France, and the Record flew me [and her friend Edna Neillis] out there. I said ‘we don’t do trials’. They signed us at half-time. We ran riot.” After six months, Reilly and Neillis were signed by Milan.
Neillis soon returned to Scotland homesick but Reilly persevered. “I stayed in Milan in a hotel for about a year and I used to stare at the mirror just talking to myself in the evenings. It was the only person that would speak back. I had no communication with anybody. I would see the
Gazzetta dello Sport, a pink newspaper dedicated almost entirely to football. I thought ‘this is great’ but ‘I cannae read it’. I then bought a dictionary and learned three words every day. I just spoke to my team-mates and the people on my street and eventually learned the lingo.”
Falling in love with Italy – where she would play until she was 40 – Reilly was regularly embarrassed by Brits who failed to make the grade out there. She cringed at Ian Rush telling local reporters he found it difficult to settle because “nobody speaks English”. These days, she finds it inexplicable that Gareth Bale has made such little apparent effort to settle in to Spanish life at Real Madrid.
“When I moved to Italy, I immediately said to myself ‘do as the Romans do’. I hadn’t even had spaghetti hoops before I went out, but you learn to embrace it. I was only 17
– a wee girl from Ayrshire. I like Gareth Bale as a player when he plays, but I don’t understand him. He’s getting megabucks and not playing. I would have paid to play.”
After retiring from football, Reilly set up a sports shop in southern Italy and got married. She moved back to Scotland with her husband and daughter to care for her mother after she suffered a stroke. Reilly gave all her medals and trophies away during her playing career, but her local leisure centre has recently been named after her. “That’s my legacy,” she says.
Reilly, 64, is thrilled that – in the wake of last summer’s World Cup – both boys and girls can now dream of growing up to play for their national teams.
“Sexism, I didn’t care,” she explains. “If you wanted to offend me, I didn’t care. I just wanted to play football.”