Grandma Boss in her pomp – the start of a sporting family dynasty
‘Grandma Boss” was the family nickname for pioneering midfielder Alice Woods, who played for the famous Dick, Kerr Ladies football team. Woods travelled the world playing in front of sell-out crowds, including the 53,000 at Goodison Park in 1920 that remains a British record for a club-level women’s game. Her descendants remember only too well the “devastating” effect of the Football Association ban on women’s football, in 1921, as she shared the memories with her granddaughters many years later.
“It was for no reason other than male pride,” Yvonne Quigley, Woods’s granddaughter and a former British swimmer, says indignantly. “That’s what it all boiled down to, because the women were getting fantastic crowds. They were told ‘it’s not ladylike’. Even Grandma’s mum Margaret used to say ‘stick to your athletics, football is ungainly and you get filthy dirty’. And, yes, women’s football has come on now, but imagine where it would have been if they’d have carried on playing.”
Yvonne knows the importance of visible female sporting role models more than most, with a famous footballer for a grandmother. Her sister, Gaynor Stanley, shared the family sporting talent, competing as a swimmer at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, while Quigley’s daughter Lauren won three Commonwealth silver medals in the pool. With Woods’s brother also having played for FC Halifax Town, theirs is a veritable sporting dynasty.
Life for a sportswoman in the 1920s was not easy. Woods trained for speed with her pet whippet, running on a cinder track, and won what was reported to be the first women’s race held under the Amateur Athletic Association of England rules, an 80-yard competition in Blackpool in September 1918.
“She was always in a dress – she never wore trousers,” says Yvonne. “You’d think a sportswoman would be in trousers but I never ever remember her having trousers on. We called her ‘Grandma Boss’. She wasn’t bossy, but she was in charge of everything. She was a very gentle lady, but you wouldn’t cross her, absolutely not. I was very close to her, she was a wonderful woman, always warm and welcoming.”
In retirement, Woods became an ardent supporter of her granddaughters’ feats in the pool, in attendance at every competition, and it was there that Yvonne got to know her grandmother’s stories. “We had to ask her questions about her football and her running, because she wouldn’t ever brag about things herself, but because I stayed with her very regularly after swimming practice, I knew a lot of things about her life.”
Yvonne heard how much of a struggle it was for Woods to gain permission from her family to play sport. “Grandma’s mum was a very strict lady,” she says. “Alice’s dad died when she was three, so her brother took over the ‘man of the house’ [role], but when he went off to war, they all had to pitch in. So, when Grandma was actually asked to move and play at Halifax or Preston, she said ‘absolutely not, we need her at home’.”
Woods would share stories of the wilder members of Dick, Kerr Ladies, including the star player, Lily Parr, who was “quite a character”. “Grandma looked after her, because Grandma Alice didn’t drink, smoke or wear make-up, nothing, she was from quite a religious family, she was quite a sensible lady. It was actually Grandma who got Lily Parr’s mum to give her permission to play, because she was another very strict lady.”
The work of historians has helped to shed light on Dick, Kerr Ladies. The family are now finding out more still, thanks to the genealogy service Findmypast, which located Alice, her brother John, and their family in the 1921 census. “I love it because it brings Grandma alive again for me,” Yvonne says of seeing her signature in the archived documents.
Yvonne’s daughter Lauren carries Alice as her middle name, and says Woods would have loved to know that another descendant of hers became a sporting success. “Even in her late eighties, she came and watched us swimming,” remembers Yvonne. “She’d get herself worked up, shouting, cheering. I used to say ‘Grandma, you’re going to have a heart attack’ and she’d say ‘but if I die, I’ll die doing what I love’. She was sport through and through.”
Now Lauren, having retired from swimming, has taken up football to play for AFC Stockport, close to the ground where Dick, Kerr Ladies beat France 5-2 in 1920. “To follow that sporting journey, from ‘Grandma Boss’ down all the way to myself, fills you with a lot of pride.”
‘They were told ‘it’s not ladylike’. Even her mum used to say ‘stick to your athletics, football is ungainly’ ’*