Girls can kick

Dorothy Briggs of Daylesford recalls her days of playing women’s football in a competition between the knitting mills of the district.

Thank you to Dorothy Briggs and Irene Malone.

TRANSCRIPT

[PEOPLE SHOUTING] DOROTHY BRIGGS: That must’ve been the team, because they were all there and had their photo taken. We all worked here at the Holmes’ Mill. We were weavers and all those sorts of thing.

We got together and we— we did a bit of training. And they went up to the park and trained, just like the footballers do, and then played this team from over the big mill. My gosh, there were some big girls amongst them, of course.

[LAUGHTER]

[WHISTLE BLOWS]

[MEN SHOUTING]

The first team that played Daylesford, nobody wanted to walk out first. And I had number 9, so they turned around and said I had to go first. So they gave me number 1 and pushed me at the door to go through, yeah. Because once one went out, then the rest followed, of course.

[LAUGHTER]

I was brought up with five brothers, so you learned to kick the football. It was a lot of fun. Put it that way. A lot of fun. It was— some of the girls had never been in a pair of shorts, and … As you can imagine what it was like when they got out on the— and some of them had never kicked a football, so you could imagine what that was like..

[PEOPLE SHOUTING]

The first time we played, there must’ve been some footballers up in Daylesford at the time. And I remember them taking up a collection. And I got half the money and June Jeffries— I think it was June Jeffries— got the other half, because they reckoned we were the best on the ground.

And it was surprising was in the people would go to see— well, I think most of the men just went to see the girls in their shorts, I think, and see how they’d kick a football.

[WHISTLE BLOWS]

[PEOPLE SHOUTING]

They were all good friends. Oh, a jovial lot. When you look at that now, I can count up the ones that’s not there, that’s not with us anymore. It’s sad, really, that there’s so many of ‘ems gone. But then when you look at it now and see the girls that’s out kicking football on the ground, there’s just as many as there is boys.

And some of the girls can kick. Over at Newland last week, there was a little tot, and she was left-footed. And she could kick that ball. Oh, I watched her and watched her. Yes, I thought she was very good.