It’s Boxing Day 1920, Liverpool, Goodison Park; The Dick, Kerr Ladies FC win a decisive 4-0 victory over St Helens, cheered on by 53,000 screaming football fans in the stadium. The players are the biggest stars in football; however, within a year, all women footballers are banned from playing on the Football Association members’ grounds. This ban will remain in place until 1971.
Our Girls Our Game follows the successes and challenges of the girls from Preston’s; Dick, Kerr munitions factory, who created a football team, raised huge amounts of money for the war effort, and took part in, and won, the first women’s international fixture. This is a new musical about a women’s football team and what women can achieve when they work together and refuse to limit their expectations, even in the face of classism, sexism and bigotry.
The FA said at the time that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged”; the players responded that they would “continue to play, if the organisers of charity matches will provide grounds, even if we have to play on ploughed fields”. The women of our story include extraordinarily powerful sports women, role models and fighters.
Our Girls Our Game was created by a company of female and non-binary performers, aged 12 to 21, from across the UK and the world, who worked together with a professional creative and technical team to develop this show, first workshopped by BYMT in 2021. With a contemporary pop score, athletic choreography and performed so soon after the Lionesses historic Euro win, the show celebrates the origins of this country’s incredible female sporting prowess.
