Edna Neillis
Pioneer of women’s football Born: April 15, 1953; Died: July 13, 2015. EDNA NEILLIS, who has died aged 62, was a pioneer of women’s football who helped build the foundations for the popularity that the game enjoys in Scotland today.
With her best friend and contemporary Rose Reilly, she blazed a trail throughout Europe, playing for highprofile professional clubs in France and Italy during the 1970s. She finally hung up her boots in 1990, replacing football fame in the Italian game with a quiet life away from the spotlight back home in Scotland.
However, unlike Ms Reilly, whose success as an international striker eventually earned her a place as the only woman in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, Ms Neillis’s sporting achievements remained largely unmarked in later life. Yet she was one of the finest inside rights ever produced by the women’s game in Scotland. With her fiery red hair and slight build she was often described as a female version of Jimmy Johnstone.
Edna Neillis was born the youngest of five children to a working-class family from Springburn, Glasgow. The family moved to Craigend and she was educated at Ruchazie Primary School and Garthamlock Secondary.
She caught the football bug kicking a ball about with the boys in the streets. In an age when women’s football barely existed, the only way she could enjoy a competitive game was to play with the lads.
Speaking just a few months before her death, she recalled playing for the Ruchazie Boys against another local male team on a black ash pitch at Queen’s Park. Rangers-daft throughout her life, she also remembered Jock Stein approaching her after seeing her play and saying that if she had been a boy he would have signed her up there and then.
Her first experience of all-female football came when she played with local team Westthorn United against the Hooverettes, a side from the Hoover factory at Cambuslang.
Every game she took part in on British soil was played on public pitches.
In those days women’s football was banned from league grounds by both the SFA and the FA. This dated back to the First World War, when the football authorities deemed that the women’s game was becoming too popular.
Neillis also played for Westthorn when they took part in the UK Women’s Championship, organised by Hughie Green for ITV’s Opportunity Knocks.
The side reached the regional finals at Butlins in Ayr, where they played Stewarton Thistle. They were eventually beaten in the grand final in Brighton.
Still a teenager, she was capped for Scotland, playing alongside Reilly in the first official women’s international against England at Greenock in 1972. The two girls became firm friends, sharing the burning ambition to make a career out of their sporting talent.
However, with the women’s game still unrecognised by sport’s governing bodies, they knew they had to look to Europe if they wanted to turn professional.
In 1974 the girls approached a newspaper for help and found it in the shape of legendary journalist Stan Shivas. He immediately saw the potential of the story and persuaded his paper to pay for the pair to go to France to play a trial for Stade de Reims.
They were an immediate success but, after playing only a few games for the French side, their talents were spotted by a scout from AC Milan.
They quickly moved to Italy, helping the club to win both the Serie A title and the Italian Cup in 1975. Needing a win against Lazio in the last game of the season to make sure they lifted the title, Neillis scored two goals and Reilly one to help their side to victory.
Edna Neillis went on to win a second Italian Cup with Milan in 1976. She then transferred to another Italian side, AFC Gorgonzola, a move that earned her a third Italian Cup winner’s medal. She later played for Piacenza and finally for Foggia.
She ended her 15-year Italian football career in 1990.
Between them, Neillis and Reilly paved the way for a long list of Scotswomen to play in the lucrative Italian league through the 1970s and 80s.
Though Edna Neillis had enjoyed her life and career on the continent – she learned the language, became a dab hand at Italian cooking, and fell in and out of love – she was always keen to return home to Scotland.
She came back permanently when she retired and lived the rest of her life quietly in Cumbernauld. She worked in a variety of jobs, including as a dispatcher for a radio taxi firm and a stewardess on the Citylink long-distance coach service. It was during her time on the coaches that she met her partner, bus driver Robert McKie. The couple were together until her death.
In recent years, ill health had resulted in the amputation of her legs.