Dick, Kerr’s Ladies in their prime.
Of all the stories of the legendary Dick, Kerr’s Ladies, the one that stuck with me had nothing to do with their many achievements. Yes, they won a lopsided 759 of their 833 games; admittedly, they were celebrities in their day, attracting 53,000 fans to one match with an additional 6,000 waiting outside the gates; and okay, they were the first team, male or female, to hold a game at night, to be featured in a newsreel, and to play internationally.
But, no. The story I recall involves excessive amounts of beer, false teeth and camaraderie. It goes something like this:
Dick Kerr’s Ladies had a habit of stopping for a drink after matches over the objections of their coach Alfred Frankland. Such trips were often accompanied by music; several on the team played the mouth organ and one, Nancy Thompson, played the accordion. Between the bar stops and the music on the bus, road trips were laughter-filled, raucous affairs.
Dick Kerr’s player Joan Whalley told Gail J. Newsham, author of In a League of Their Own! about one occasion involving Dick Kerr’s superstar Lily Parr. Parr confounded societal expectations about appropriate behavior for women at every turn. She smoked. She drank. According to her peers, she had a habit of ‘nicking’ things she liked, especially match-day soccer balls. Most likely,
she was gay at a time when homosexuality was against the law in the U.K.
She was also one of the greatest ever to play the game, standing nearly six feet tall with a fearsome left foot and a brilliant football mind.
On this night, several members of the team had enough beer to render them tipsy, while Parr was ‘well away.’ Approximately five miles down the road, Parr shouted for the driver Tommy to stop the bus.
“I have to get out. I’m going to be sick,” she told him. And she was, on the side of the road.
The trip resumed and after another five miles, Parr again shouted for Tommy to stop the bus. “You have to go back,” she said. “I have left my bloody false teeth.”
“So Tommy turned the bus around, and off we went driving down the road looking for a pile of sick and Parr’s teeth,” Whalley told Gresham. “Would you believe it? We actually found them. We wrapped them up in some paper for her and put them in her pocket. It was a while before they let her live it down.”
Years later, Parr became the first woman inducted into the English Football Association’s inaugural Hall of Fame class.