Elsie the Great
Sports awards celebrate women’s football legend and her trailblazing teammates
It was a big day, a big game and, almost exactly 50 years later, Elsie Cook remembers every second.
The first official international women’s football game was played between Scotland and England in November 1972 at Ravenscraig Stadium in Greenock.
Cook remembers the game but also remembers the sexist abuse endured by female footballers in the days when they were forced to change outside, told they should be staying at home cleaning, and warned they would be unable to play a game like football because of their breasts.
The pioneer of the women’s game became a powerful voice against that rubbish, helping reverse the SFA ban on females playing the sport and eventually becoming manager of Scotland’s women’s football team and the first secretary of the Scottish Women’s Football Association. Cook,
now 76, will look back on her mission to give women the same rights and respect as men in the world of football at the Scottish Women In Sport awards on Friday, five decades to the day since she played for Scotland against England when her daughter Lorna, then aged three, was the team mascot.
The Ravenscraig Pioneers, who were led by Cook, are finalists in the awards, nominated in the Tru Wealth Pioneer category, celebrating women who fought for equality in the sporting world.
It seems a long way from the 1960s when the teenager tried to establish a women’s football team in her home town of Stewarton in Ayrshire. “You would be absolutely disgusted by the things people said to us back then,” said Cook, now a grandmother of 10. “Nobody thought women should be playing football and it wasn’t just men saying it – it was women as well.
“The amount of abuse we got for just wanting to kick a ball about a field, it was ridiculous. But I wouldn’t have any of it, I just couldn’t understand it. I felt like the Emmeline Pankhurst of football, like we were football suffragettes fighting to be given the same respect and opportunities as men.
“While people were trying to stop us from playing, all I could see was the World Cup, the Olympics, professional leagues, European Cups all stretching out in front of us and I knew that was the goal.”
The first time Cook played the game was in 1961, at 14 – a charity match raising money for Ethiopia – when she played centre-half alongside her mother, aunties and other young women from the area, including Susan Ferries, 17, who became an inspiration to the young Cook.
“Most of them had never kicked a ball in their life, except maybe on the beach,” she said. “But there was this one girl, Susan, who came from Riccarton in Kilmarnock, and she already played with the men and the boys. After playing with her in that game – where she scored seven goals – my fate was sealed and I was on a mission to prove girls weren’t too frail, or in physical danger, and that they could play football, well!”
After falling in love with the game, Cook became determined to set up a proper women’s team and began recruiting players from around Stewarton. “I put up flyers all around the town recruiting women, in the dentist, the shops, on notice boards,” she said.
“This was the days of men wearing the trousers and women chained to the sink so the idea that women would go out and be running around a field was completely out of the question to a lot of people. But, despite the ridicule, our talents and having Susan’s footballing reputation won people’s respect and we started to go from strength to strength.
“We were picking up really amazing players as we went along, including wee superstar Rose Reilly in 1963, who was just nine years old, after I had seen her playing with the boys and invited her to join us.
“We didn’t have any funding or money, of course, so I had to ask for boots and kit. We ended up with rugby boots and this old leather ball that was filled with a bladder that used to poke out. We also had to use rolled-up Sunday Post newspapers as shin pads – they were always nice and thick.”
The irony is that newspapers, including The Sunday Post at the time, described the first official match in 1972 as “22 crackpot females running around a football pitch, bouncing boobs all over the place”. Another headline from the Weekly News read: “Hey Ref, Stop the Game! The Left-Back Has Broken a Bra Strap!”
“The press were definitely against us,” said Cook. “But it was more than that. There was a ban placed on women playing football in 1921 by the SFA, so this meant no pitches under the respective football associations were allowed, and councils were the same. They didn’t register women’s teams. So in those early days there were no changing facilities, which meant we’d have to strip behind the men’s changing blocks, and official referees were also denied us.”
Cook made it her mission to reverse the ban, and was invited to plead her team’s case to the then-SFA secretary, Willie Allan, a renowned stickler for rules who had previously avoided meeting her. When she finally got an audience, the meeting resulted in a sexist exchange that Cook remembers to this day.
“All Willie could say to me was ‘football is not for women – it’s far too physical’, and he couldn’t bring himself to quite say the words but he patted his chest area and looked me straight in the eye.
“He just shook his head and saw me out, so we accepted the offer from Ravenscraig Park in Greenock to play the first international match there as they were a privately-owned pitch outwith SFA and the council. It wasn’t until 1974 that the SFA lifted the ban and, up until then, out of 32 countries that allowed it, Scotland had stood firm in denying women’s football.
“But the world was changing and in the USA women were burning their bras and in general women were fighting for equality.
“And look at us. Even when they said no, we played on regardless. That perseverance is why we are where we are today but there is still definitely more that needs to be done.”
Maureen McGonigle, founder and chief executive of Scottish Women In Sport, said it was due to the passion and determination of Cook and women like her that equality was forged in sports in Scotland.
“This year we have athletes in the age range of 15 up to 72 and we also once again celebrate those who have paved the way many years ago to enable young women and girls to participate today,” she said.
“Ravenscraig Pioneers are receiving accolades over 50 years since they were formed, playing football against a background of deep sexism, and it has been wonderful to see so many organisations understanding and celebrating those who have gone before.
“This year’s awards will bring so many different people together and will recognise just a few of the many people who are helping us to continue our quest to bring equality and diversity into sport.”