"At every level, the story of Australian women's football is one of heartbreak, adversity, and obstacles — so many obstacles — but also of tremendous courage and perseverance." — Fiona Crawford and Lee McGowan, Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women's Football.
1921
Jean Campbell is standing on the penalty spot. She leans down and carefully places the ball on the hard Queensland turf, balancing and twisting the heavy leather into a boot-scuffed patch of dirt.
The 16-year old — her body still growing into itself, still discovering what it can do — stands upright, takes a few steps backwards, and pauses.
Her North Brisbane team-mates bustle and bounce a few metres behind her, held back by the invisible line of the 18-yard box, like runners before a race. They're dressed in thick, oversized cotton jerseys and dark red bloomers.
Scattered among them are their South Brisbane opponents, kitted out in the same scratchy outfits, but in navy blue.
Jean reaches down and adjusts her muddied socks, tugging them up her pale legs. The socks had caused quite a stir at the Queensland Football Association general meeting a few months earlier when a board member, R.J. Powell, suggested they be worn in place of stockings.
"Well, it's like this," Powell had said to titters of laughter from the many women in attendance. "If you wear stockings, you will want a new pair every week! They play in socks in the old country."
One of the women corrected him: you are referring to three-quarter hose, sir, not socks. Another laugh washed around the room, including from Powell himself. He was one of the women's game's earliest allies, helping set up Queensland's first women's teams and formalising Australia's first women's association.
"What boots shall we wear?" asked another girl.
"Latrobe club have made arrangements to secure boots with light wallaby tops, and bars instead of studs," Powell replied. "Of course, you won't want high-heels on your boots."
Campbell plucks tufts of grass out of her borrowed boots, grateful for their flat heels. She has been one of the best on ground, not afraid to throw herself into challenges, much to the crowd's delight. Her teammate, H. Breeze, had put North Brisbane ahead in the first 30-minute half.
Now, as full-time looms, the young Campbell — captain of the Reds — has been called upon to take this decisive penalty kick.
The 10,000-strong crowd at the Brisbane Cricket Ground falls to a hush as Campbell waits for the referee's signal.
The opposition goalkeeper bends her knees and holds her arms wide, ready to catch or parry. The referee nods. Campbell charges at the ball and stabs at it with the point of her boot.
The dark leather flies past the stranded goalkeeper and into the net. The crowd erupts, chanting the teenager's name: "Campbell! Campbell! Campbell!"
Moments later, full-time is called. The final score: North Brisbane 2, South Brisbane 0. It's September 24, 1921 and the first official game of women's football in Australia has drawn to a close.
"This was the first time that women playing football had really been documented; really put on a good stage," said Fiona Crawford, co-author of Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women's Football.
"It was an awareness-raising event. It was changing the perceptions of people who'd probably never thought about women playing or didn't think it was appropriate that they could, so it's a significant moment. It feels like a step forward; this game took it to another level.
"Football was a man's game. There were all these wider questions and cultural attitudes that women had to address in order to play. For example, what's appropriate for a woman to wear and is it feminine and suitable for her to be running around? And what does this mean for her to be able to bear children afterwards?
"[The game] feels like a bit of a sliding-doors moment. You had 10,000 people there; there was demonstrated interest. It could have really kicked off and you could have seen it go on this really fascinating trajectory, but instead, it's more of an isolated exhibition match.
"But imagine if they'd gone, 'hey, there's something in this and we're going to throw all these resources behind it and bring them into the fold.' […] That would have been amazing. Instead, you have women who've made do with very little and have succeeded, and they've done some pretty incredible things in spite of it."
One hundred years ago today, the Brisbane Cricket Ground hosted the first official game of women's football in Australian history.
It was not the first time women had played the game — records dating back to the first years of the new century show women approaching men's clubs asking to form new teams — but what was different about "The Gabba Game" was its platform: a formally sanctioned and advertised match between women's teams in a public arena.
The growing interest in women's football in Australia reflected the enthusiasm for it in Britain.
England's Dick, Kerr Ladies team, for example, regularly attracted sell-out crowds and raised tens of thousands of pounds for charity. They embarked on continental tours and were followed by the mainstream press. One player, Lily Parr, became a national celebrity.
But by the 1920s, the fledging women's game threatened the established order. On December 5, 1921, the English FA banned women from playing on association pitches, relegating them to backyards and public parks. They were effectively banned from the sport altogether.
This ban didn't take effect in Australia in quite the same way, but according to Crawford, similar attitudes filtered across the colonies and embedded themselves in the football community here. The chairman of the Queensland Football Association, John William Kendal, even resigned in protest at women being admitted.
"It's almost like we had an invisible hand-break on," she said.
"I wonder what it would have been like [here] if it hadn't been banned in the UK; if we hadn't been so closely aligned with the UK and adopted some of those attitudes.
"Although women were allowed to play, they weren't encouraged, and they weren't actively given lots of opportunities to do so. You didn't necessarily get the best pitches, or access to where you had lights, you didn't get the best coaches, so you couldn't develop your skills.
"And when you don't develop your skills, you don't have as much success, so then you don't attract more funding. It's those kinds of things that are a little bit more insidious.
"It actually came down more to power and money, I think; men feeling a little bit threatened about [losing] control of the game, and also that there was interest in women's football, so they were potentially taking away ticket sales and funding from the men's game.
"Yes, some actively stood in the way of it — and, to be fair, plenty didn't. But because men occupied that space and all the funding and structures were built around them — and women were always fitting around that — it's more that the women's game was overlooked and not given the love or opportunities it deserved."
Nevertheless, they persisted. Although records are patchy, women continued to play football around Australia even after the shadow ban of 1921, pushing back against the prohibitive structures and attitudes of their time in order to play the game they loved, paving the way for generations of women to do the same.
1971
It would be 50 years — almost an entire generation — before the next major milestone in the women's game arrived: the formation of national teams to compete in the first international tournaments.
In July 1971, England's FA lifted the ban that had kept women off association grounds, welcoming them (to some extent) back into football. This symbolic moment flooded across the world, with other governing bodies and clubs gradually allowing women to play again.
That same year, a pilot Women's World Cup was organised in Mexico by an independent European women's association. 100,000 people reportedly turned up at the Azteca Stadium for the opening match between Mexico and Argentina, with a further 110,000 there for the final between the hosts and Denmark — a still-standing record for a women's sports event.
Slowly, attitudes towards women playing the game began to change.
In 1974, the Australian Women's Soccer Association (AWSA) was formed, which organised its own women's competitions, including the annual National Championships. The AWSA also helped select the first women's teams that would represent Australia on the world stage.
Queenslander Sue Monteath was a teenager when she was first named to the national team in 1977. She had an almost mystical connection to the women footballers of 50 years earlier: her local football field growing up was Bardon Latrobe, where the first women's team in Queensland was formed in 1921.
"At the time, when I joined a club, Bardon Latrobe didn't have a women's team," she said. "However, I spent endless hours training there with my brothers all by myself […] so I have a bit of a smile on my face when I think maybe I was following in their footsteps all along.
"It must have been a fantastic community feel when they all met and decided to form a club and organise a competition. That's pretty special, especially in those days, so long ago. I've been reading that they were wondering what to wear — they got out of stockings and put socks on — and in some ways, those sorts of decisions were paralleled when we were playing. Initially, when I played, we didn't have a team set of shorts […] so you'd see a whole range of shorts that people would come up with.
"I think it's really sad that it appears people were a bit reticent to go and play because of the reputation they may have, or even the reports in the papers. They just wanted to play but they were conscious that maybe they were offending people.
"It parallels what's happening in Afghanistan at the moment: people want to play the game but someone else makes a decision and you can't do it. I think that sort of thread comes through from 100 years ago, it was still evident when I played, and I think it's still evident today.
"[But] we weren't really the first ones that started to recognise that football was worthwhile to play for women, so I think it's fantastic to think about that and pay our respects to all those people who got it started."
Monteath, or 'Monty' to her teammates, was a talented midfielder; her multi-sport upbringing and football-supporting father David (who set up a kick-board in their backyard) saw her skills accelerate beyond her peers. Within two years of joining a local club, she was playing for the national side, including taking part in the first formally recognised Australian women's national team in October 1979.
Australia had put together representative sides in the past: a team sent to Hong Kong for the first women's Asian Cup in 1975, a team sent to Taiwan for the World Women's Invitational Tournament in 1978.
Monteath recalled the torrential rain and being served an entire chicken, head and all, in a bucket at the army barracks they were staying in.
But October 1979 is acknowledged by Football Australia as the official birth of the Australian women's national team.
Despite its historic importance, though, Monteath remembers little about the game itself: a 2-2 draw against New Zealand at Seymour Shaw Park in Sydney.
"It's a little bit of a blur," she said.
"There doesn't seem to be any photos of that team. Maybe it was just a complete oversight that we didn't have a photo.
"We just went out and played. I don't really recall a lot about it; I was just on adrenaline all the time and just enjoying every moment.
"I don't recall the national anthem being played or anything like that. it was just two teams went out of the dressing room, we went and shook hands, and then we played our game. [None] of the fan-fare you get these days.
"After the game, we weren't staying in the same motel or anything — we were all billeted or staying with friends. It's a little different to when we were in Taiwan, for instance, [where] we all stayed and travelled together.
"It almost felt like, 'let's have a game and see how we go against New Zealand,' as opposed to being in a tournament, if you like. It almost felt like a low-key friendly game.
"We did get to play two more games after that, and the final one was in Brisbane — my home town — so it was really special that friends and family could watch.
"I just enjoyed playing the game."
Despite almost 50 years of change, women footballers still faced similar challenges to those early pioneers. They lacked financial support and publicity, there were few opportunities for quality coaches, they struggled to access equipment, fields, change-rooms and comfortable kits. It was maddening, Monteath said, but they made do; they persevered.
The wider sexist attitudes towards the women's game were visible in the various names media toyed with for the women's national side over the next 20 years: the "Soccerettes" and the "Lady Socceroos" through to the "Soccerbelles" and the "Soccertoos."
This was a time when national team players still largely paid their own way, still had full-time careers outside of football, still sewed their own badges onto hand-me-down jerseys.
The idea of being a professional footballer was, for many, a distant dream — one that would take another 50 years to become a reality.
2021
Holly McQueen is standing on the penalty spot. Her body is angled towards the corner flag where Lions FC teammate Tegan Riding is waiting with her arm raised, ready to curl the ball into the box.
Evening has already set in at Coplicks Sports Park on Queensland's Gold Coast. The smooth, green pitch glows in the floodlights that tower above the field. Beyond the advertising hoardings is a dense, cool darkness that makes the bright field look like a theatre stage. In some ways, it is.
This is round 10 of Queensland's women's National Premier Leagues competition, the state-based league from which current and future generations of Australian footballers emerge. Nineteen-year-old McQueen is one of them: a steady, natural central defender touted as the heir to Matildas veteran Clare Polkinghorne, her idol and mentor.
The ball is fizzed in low and hard from the corner, a smear of white skipping off the manicured grass. It clips off the orange-socked heel of Amy Gunston and spins towards goal. The Gold Coast keeper, Cass Zaffina, dives frantically to collect it, scrambling through a forest of black and orange shins, but the ball trickles out and into the path of McQueen.
For a moment, time slows to a crawl. The teenager — not used to being on this side of things, aiming for the net instead of defending it — coils her leg backwards out of instinct. The ball presents itself perfectly, hovering in that sweet-spot just above the grass, and she hits the soft plastic with the tops of her laces. The ball rifles into the corner of the net.
The bench erupts. Her team-mates squeal and throw their arms out into the night. It's McQueen's first and only goal of the season and the second of the night for Lions FC. They would go on to win the game 5-0.
"It was an exciting moment," McQueen said of that goal, her first at senior level. "The culture at Lions is very strong, so when anyone scores — especially someone that doesn't score often — everyone gets around it.
"I think I went, 'just get it between those posts and hit it as hard as you can; no one can stop it then!' And I was right!"
McQueen has a deeper connection to the game's history, too. Earlier this year, she became the second ever recipient of Queensland's Player of the Year award — named in honour of Sue Monteath. In fact, McQueen's mother, Pye, played alongside Monteath, while her father, Dave, coached the former Matilda in the late 1990s.
"She's a legend," McQueen said of Monteath.
"She made I-don't-know-how-many caps for the Matildas. She's one of those legends that brought the stage and the crowds to women's football. She's a Queenslander, too, so it's great to have someone like her around and still involved in mentoring us.
"I can't imagine how different it [was] back then. The training fields were different — pretty much just dirt. One ball, no bibs, no cones. I think Sue Monteath's parents were the doctors who went away on a Matildas trip. That would never happen these days.
"The way everything has changed from then to now is crazy."
Now, McQueen is out to make her own history.
Tonight, she will walk out for Queensland's first ever women's Super Cup final for Lions FC against Western Pride.
In a few weeks' time, she will start pre-season with W-League side Brisbane Roar: her first professional football contract. And when she looks ahead, she sees herself playing a part in a much bigger story as women's football in Australia continues to grow.
"It's the first year that [the Super Cup] has been included for women, so playing it on the 100-year [anniversary] is pretty cool," she said.
"Hopefully we can come away with the trophy and raise it up like all the women before us.
"Making football a career would be amazing — it's one of the top dreams on my dream board. I definitely want to try and travel with football, maybe go over to Europe somewhere and see how that goes.
"Then, one day, hoping to make my Matildas debut. I'm pushing every day to hopefully get a look-in [for the 2023 Women's World Cup] and be able to play on home soil in front of hundreds of thousands of fans.
"Because football has been in my life for so many years now, and then so many more years in the future — hopefully! — so when I'm no longer able to play, I'm definitely going to be coaching.
"I just [want to be] in and around as much as I can be, sharing what I've gone through and seeing what's in the future for all the young kids coming through. There'll definitely be more to tell."
Beyond
1921, 1971, 2021: three years, three eras, three moments that changed women's football in Australia and around the world.
The centenary of Australia's first official women's football match is an opportunity to remember the lives and stories of those who pushed and pulled the game to where it is today; to appreciate their sacrifices and honour their courage to do what few before them had done.
It is upon their shoulders that the women's game was carried, from the darkness of the early 20th century to the glittering lights of the modern day. It is in their spirit, too — the perseverance, the passion, and the joy of those early pioneers — that it will enter its next chapter.
"I don't think many people know that it was 100 years ago," McQueen said when asked about that first game. "To hear that number just sounds incredible.
"Just looking back at all that, you learn so much from all the little things that have happened — all the good and all the bad. Growing from all those things is just making us better each and every day. I'm hoping for football to grow in the next 100 years and then we can all reflect back and look at all the different steps that it's taken us to get it there."
Monteath agrees: "If you don't actually give credit to what's happened before you, you can't really take the credit for what you're doing now," she said.
"Somebody at some stage had to do something to start this game off in this country, so I think it's important to appreciate what was done in the past — now we can build on that and really grow our game.
"Now and then, people hear I played for the Matildas and they ask all sorts of questions: what was your pathway like? Did you play in a World Cup or Olympics? Did you play overseas? Were you a professional?
"Answering these questions enables me to appreciate how far the women's game has come. I'm grateful to all those who supported me directly, especially my family, but also all the people who have contributed from afar, including coaches, referees, and administrators.
"Now, with the 2023 Women's World Cup, the second century of women's football in Australia looks set to boom. It will be exciting times ahead."
For Crawford, the very act of recording history is symbolic: it is proof that something is worth remembering, that it is valuable in and of itself. It is also a significant education tool that should be consulted as the game evolves; to look back in order to look forward.
"It's been many, many decades of women doing some incredible hard yards to get to this point," she said. "It's like every decade there's been a domino, but now it feels like we've tipped it; the hand-break has been released.
"Pay parity, obtaining the same conditions as the Socceroos, we've seen the W-League receiving the same hourly rate, we're starting to see a lot more media coverage focusing on the players as athletes.
"We're seeing players who are able to dedicate themselves full-time to the job, instead of fitting it in and around.
"We've got uniforms that are starting to fit us. I think in terms of public awareness and support for the game, the novelty is wearing off in the best possible way.
"In order to understand it, you need to document it. Documenting it means maybe you don't repeat the history or repeat the mistakes and you learn from it and build on the opportunities.
"It's taken us 100 years to get there, but we're finally there. I hope it kicks on to another level that I can't actually imagine."