In the digital age, everything is recorded. From match highlights to WSL player edits, the continued rise of Women’s Football is documented over the expanse of the internet. As an aspiring journalist who is guilty of plastering both their written and photographic work across Instagram, I have no doubt I’m contributing to the great pool of resources evidencing the success of Women’s Football across the web in the digital age. In contemporary society, this pool of digital resources is not novel however, as a final year History Student, I have quickly begun to realise how, before the digital age, so much of the rich history of the Women’s game is almost invisible and hidden amongst achieves.
Until very recently, my use of the university library was almost exclusively online. I have made many jokes about how I need to thank my Kindle app when I cross the stage at Graduation, and not without reason. However, after choosing to focus on Women’s Football in the late 20 th Century for my dissertation, I realised I would have to brave academia without my Kindle. My search led me to a lot of screaming at my laptop and, eventually, the British Library.
In the interest of self-preservation and not getting accused of self-plagiarism in my own Dissertation that is already causing me enough stress, I will not specify which archives I was headed into the British Library to access. As
I feel, regardless of the content of the archive, my feelings about it are the same; while we think we know
what has happened in women’s football in the last century, so much of it lives in unbound and hand-written
obscurity.
I perhaps was naive about what to expect on my first trip to the British Library after disembarking the Northern Line at Euston, expecting it to be an easy and straightforward endeavour sourcing Primary Sources. I was, undoubtedly, a little too optimistic. After the Cyber Attack that hit the library last year, the whole process has been slowed down. I was
first guided to the basement to gain a reading pass that felt far more official than anything I was anticipating and then, after parting with all my belongings that had to be left in the sub- basement lockers, I made my way to the reading rooms.
After being handed my folders that had been meticulously pre-ordered, I was gently informed that I could not photograph the files, instead being fated to copy out each document by hand. While the task was no doubt tedious, it occurred to me I had a far easier job than others. For, had a few select individuals not put time into carefully curating
meeting minutes and letters, I would have nothing to copy out. I wondered if the curators of these files had imagined where their voluntary handywork would be in 30 years’ time and what had guided them to keep notes so maliciously. It also occurred to me how these pioneers, who have come a mere few generations before me and my own teammates are perhaps disappearing into obscurity outside of the pursuits of a narrow group of Historians
and Volunteers.
Having attempted to contact governing bodies about their own archives to no avail, I have begun to feel we owe those who both came before us, and documented it, more than a place in the Manuscript Basement at the British Library. The basics of the history of Women’s Football is undoubtedly documented to a usable degree. However, with so many
players having used pseudonyms and others simply not being traceable outside of team sheets, it seems a lot of female footballers are at risk of disappearing between the margins of history. I hope to write a dissertation that may shine light on some of these individuals, I cannot help but wonder, however, if this is enough?
Image: Issy Trapnell Hoyle