How It All Began: The Story of Women\u27s Soccer in Sixties Drogheda

There is very little reference to the history of women’s soccer in Irish secondary sources. Any sources that do deal with women’s soccer usually focuses on the developments since the formation of the Ladies Football Association in 1973. There is very little said about the football teams and leagues that were formed before this date. In Drogheda the earliest reference to women’s soccer was in 1966 when an indoor football league was established. Ireland was going through a period of economic growth in the 1960’s and employment opportunities for women grew in urban areas like Drogheda. This presentation outlines the impact this had on women’s sport in Drogheda, describes the Abbey Ballroom Indoor Football League and discusses the influence this league had on the development of women’s soccer in the region. As there is little secondary source material available, the main sources for this research were newspapers and oral history interviews. Thus, highlighting the how developments in technology can bridge the gap in current archival collections. The aim of this paper is to raise a discussion on the early period of women’s soccer and outline a viable strategy for other researchers to follow in order fill the gaps that exist in the current literature. This is just one small case study of a much larger project that needs to be undertaken while this period of history is still within living memory. It is hoped that this paper would be a starting point for such a project. In recent years, there has been a more in-depth exploration of the relationship between the work place and sport in Ireland but this research predominately focuses on men’s sport. It is imperative that the gender imbalance in coverage is rectified by documenting women’s involvement in soccer through oral history interviews and other research strategies while it is still within living memory. The strategies I used to document the Abbey Ballroom Indoor Football League could easily be applied to any of the other urban areas in Ireland and should yield similar results. The sixties is still within our living history and unless immediate action is taken at a national level to document this period of women’s soccer history, it could be lost forever