The day Emily became the ‘suffragette’ of Rugby Union

THE centenary celebrations of the Women’s Suffragette movement have been much in evidence this week which set me thinking – who were the early pioneers and heroines of women’s rugby?

I was aware of a famous series of eight football games played between Scotland and England women’s teams on a tour around Scotland and northern England in May and June 1881 but only recently has it come to light that the final two games were almost certainly played under Rugby Union laws.

Six matches into the series and the ladies pitched up at the Cattle Market Inn Athletic Grounds at Stanley in Liverpool on Saturday June 25 for the first of two fixtures there. The first was to kick off at 5pm that night and the second at 7.30pm on the Monday. Admission was one shilling, unusually expensive for the time, possibly to deter protesters who has caused the abandonment of two of the earlier games of football.

The Liverpool Echo reported that the Scotland Women succeeded making ‘several touchdowns and one goal’ in a dominating first half display and several more touchdowns in the second half without scoring a goal which is certainly the language of 19th century rugby.

The England women made one goal in the second half – in those days a converted try was always referred to as a goal but as Scotland won 2-1, I suspect somewhere along the line they also scored a dropped goal, worth one point then. Two days later Scotland won 2-0, also it would seem in a game of rugby not football.

After that it seems to go quiet but women’s rugby was still on the radar in 1885 when cigarette manufacturers Ogdens – from Liverpool which might be pertinent – produced a famous image of a woman rugby player ‘attempting a dropped goal’. It is usually assumed to be based on an individualidentity unknown – from the matches in 1881.

The first women’s rugby star we can identity beyond all question was a schoolgirl called Emily Valentine. Valentine,

above, was a student at Royal Portora School in Enniskillen where her father was the assistant headmaster and where two of her brothers formed the first rugby team at the school in 1885.

In the best comic book tradition, she seized her chance when Portora were one player short when she was stood on the touchline supporting her brother. As she recalled in her journal: “I loved rugby football, but seldom got a chance to do more than kick a placekick or a drop-kick, but I could run in spite of petticoats and thick undergarments. My great ambition was to play in a real rugby game and score a try. “At last my chance came. I got the ball...I can still feel the damp leather and the smell of it, and see the tag of lacing at the opening. I grasped it and ran dodging, darting, but I was so keen to score that try that I did not pass it, perhaps when I should. “I still raced on, I could see the boy coming towards me; I dodged, yes I could and breathless, with my heart thumping, my knees shaking a bit, I ran. Yes, I had done it; one last spurt and I touched down, right on the line. I had scored my try.”