There’s a raw moment at the close of The Ladies Football Club which brings home how drastically life has changed in the last century.
Violet, the instigator of a Sheffield munitions factory’s women’s football club, welcomes her young great-granddaughter Maia on stage in a full player’s kit, to a standing ovation. Today, most of us would think little of such a scene. But for the team, who played their early public games in hairnets and overalls at the behest of a factory owner seeking to humiliate them, it would have been everything.
This world premiere at Sheffield’s Crucible explores the founding of women’s football through the perspectives of 11 incredible women, in the home of football, during World War One.
It’s quite the task to introduce so many big personality characters. Much of act one is dedicated to it. There’s persuasive Violet (Cara Theobold), mysterious Melanie (Clair Norris), and straight-talking Justine (Anne Odeke) for starters.
Together with their colleagues – including a relentlessly feisty trade unionist played by a brilliant Leah Brotherhead, a Joan of Arc megafan and a minister’s daughter – they discover the beautiful game while accidentally practicing with a bomb prototype. It’s the first big laugh in the show inspired by real events.
Image by Johan Persson
After an own goal, the team win their debut game with a jubilant celebration that touches even the most hardened non-football fan. Later, another match is interrupted by the wail of an air raid siren. All the women spend time underground lamenting, but it’s a wrongful off-side decision they’re focused on, rather than the war.
The fast-paced show – told across two 45 minute halves – is shot through with some painfully poignant moments. It touches on equality, gender expectations and the harsh realities for women who stepped up while their husbands were away fighting. On-pitch action is also brought to life with beautifully fluid, witty choreography, thanks to movement director Scott Graham and director Elizabeth Newman. This meshing together of sport and theatre tells the story as much as the dialogue.
As the team grows stronger, they play to crowds of more than 50,000 people. They play at hallowed grounds and in the glare of the nation’s media. They finally get a proper kit. However, all this success is brought to an end by injustice. The real, rage-inducing injustice of the English Football Association banning women’s football from their pitches in 1921. The excuse? That the sport was ‘unsuitable’ for women and could affect their fertility.
Of course, the women also lost their jobs as men returned home. It’s a tragedy that, despite the support for the Lionesses today, is often overlooked.
In this fictional retelling, I’d have welcomed more detail on the politics and history off the pitch. But if The Ladies Football Club introduces more mainstream audiences to the truth, and the pioneers of the sport, then it’s a show worth staging.
Main image by Johan Persson
The Ladies Football Club is at Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, until March 28, 2026. For more information, follow this link: https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/events/the-ladies-football-club
