The Times - UK - 04.12.2021

season, and was discovered by the club’s

assistant manager, Terry Skiverton, on

March 31 after he failed to arrive for

training.

The club were left to navigate the

National League season without their

captain, unaware of the mental-health

struggles that he had been facing.

“What we’ve been through the last

year has been sort of ups and downs and

we never forget Lee, he’s still a part of

us,” Luke Wilkinson, their present

captain, says. “He’s still our captain and

spirit and we’ll do anything we can to

raise awareness of mental-health

struggles people have and hopefully

they can go and get help.”

Such adversity, and a horror that few

footballers will ever have to experience,

has forged a unique unity within the

dressing room.

“It’s certainly brought us together, we

are closer,” Wilkinson says. “I think it

was our first win of the season [against

Aldershot Town], the fans have a flag

with Lee’s face on it and all the new lads

have bought into it. After the win we

had the flag and we were celebrating

and the new lads were fully behind that

as well.

“Just little things like that; it’s a

special group and keeps us together. I

know it sounds a bit strange that some-

thing so devastating can bring you all so

together, even the new lads coming in,

but it certainly has — and he definitely

doesn’t go forgotten.”

How does Wilkinson fill the boots of

such an inspirational leader, in such

impossible circumstances? “I don’t

think I’ll be half the captain he ever

was,” he says. “If I had to talk about

they had raised more

than £275,000 for the

International Red Cross

and Oxfam. Whitworth

remembers playing football in

the park as a young girl, unaware of

the repercussions of the ban. She

joined the Corinthians when she was

11, training each Sunday at Fog Lane

Park in Didsbury. The team were

considered the best in England at the

time, although due to the ban,

the level of domestic

competition was minimal. In

1960, when Whitworth was

only 14, the Red Cross

invited the Corinthians to

tour South America

and the Caribbean.

The trip was

scheduled to last

six weeks, but

was so

successful they

were asked to

stay three

months, playing

at the biggest stadiums

— about 56,000 people

watched them play in

Venezuela. “In

Venezuela we didn’t

Ban forced

women to

travel globe

for acclaim

10 1GS Saturday December 4 2021 | the times

WEEKENDQUIZ

Which snooker

player fell asleep

during his 6-5 defeat

by Anthony Hamilton

at the UK

Championship?

Who scored two

tries for

Northampton Saints in

their 36-20 win over

Bristol Bears last

weekend?

Former British

No 1 Johanna

Konta retired from

professional tennis

this week. Which is the

only grand-slam semi-

final she did not

reach?

Who scored a

penalty after

gifting a goal to Jadon

Sancho in Chelsea’s 1-1

draw with Manchester

United on Sunday?

Who was the first

black golfer to

play at the Masters in

1975 who died this

week?

Name the British

cyclist using the

following anagram.

Unreal Yank

George Ford will

be replaced at

Leicester Tigers next

season by which fly

half?

Lionel Messi won

a record seventh

Ballon d’Or this

week. Who came

second?

The penultimate

grand prix of the

season takes place in

Saudi Arabia

tomorrow. Where is

the final one being

hosted?

Who will captain

Europe in the

2023 Solheim Cup?

Name the

German football

player using the

following emojis.

England Women

beat Latvia 20-0

this week. How many

players scored hat-

tricks?

And who

became

the Lionesses’

record

goalscorer

with 48?

The

first

Test of the

Ashes

begins on

Wednesday

at the Gabba in

Brisbane. When did

England last win a Test

there?

Cristiano Ronaldo

scored two goals

in Manchester United’s

3-2 win over Arsenal.

How many career

goals has he now

scored?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12

13

14

15

ANSWERS

1’ Mark

Williams; 2,

Tommy

Freeman; 3,

US Open; 4,

Jorginho; 5,

Lee Elder;

6, Laura

Kenny; 7,

Handré

Pollard; 8,

Robert

Lewando

wski; 9,

Abu Dhabi;

10, Suzann

Petterson;

11, Toni

Kroos; 12,

Four (Beth

Mead, Ellen White,

Lauren Hemp, Alessia

Russo); 13, Ellen White;

14, 1986; 15, 801

Guess who answer:

Justin Rose

2

FOR THE WEEKEND

PODCAST

CRICKET ETC

Times readers will be

familiar with Gideon

Haigh, who will be

writing for the paper

during the Ashes. He

and his colleague on

The Australian, Peter

Lalor, discuss, as the

title suggests, mostly

cricket with a few

other things thrown in.

It provides an

intelligent and far

from one-eyed take on

Australian cricket,

lightened by the pair’s

dry humour. Haigh is

as acute an observer

as there is of the game

and no one is better

plugged into what is

going on behind the

scenes in the

Australian camp than

Lalor.

BOOK

AUSTRALIA 55

The best book ever

written about an

Ashes series. Alan

Ross was a cricket

writer and a poet and

brings the sensibilities

of both roles to a book

that is part an account

of what happened on

the field in 1954-55

and part travelogue.

T

omorrow afternoon Arsenal

and Chelsea, two of the best

women’s teams in the world,

will walk out at Wembley

stadium in front of

thousands of fans, as full-time

professionals, before playing an FA

Cup final broadcast around the globe

to millions.

With more than 45,000 tickets sold

for the delayed 2020-21 Cup final, it

will be not too dissimilar to the size of

the crowd that watched Dick Kerr

Ladies play St Helen’s Ladies in front

of 53,000 people at Goodison Park on

Boxing Day, 1920.

The idea that less than a year on

from that match, women’s football

was effectively banned is scarcely

believable, and yet that is what

happened. A century to the day

before tomorrow’s cup final, on

December 5, 1921, the FA cited strong

opinions about football’s unsuitability

for females as a reason to call on

clubs “to refuse the use of their

grounds for such matches”. The rules

stood until they began to be relaxed

in 1969. “The only thing about history

we know, is that you can’t repeat it,

but what you can do is learn from it,”

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, the

FA director of women’s football, says.

Women’s football did not vanish

entirely, for it meant too much to too

many, but it largely disappeared from

the public consciousness. Though the

FA guidance stipulated only that

women were unable to play in FA

grounds, the act is still widely

described as a ban.

To this day the process of

tracking what football was

played in that period is

difficult, according to Tim

Desmond, the chief

executive of the National

Football Museum.

“It is a bit like a jigsaw

puzzle,” he says. “Slowly

through time, more and

more things are going to

be uncovered. It’s those oral

histories... I think there has

been some bitterness in the past

about the fact it wasn’t being told.”

One of those untold stories is that

of Margaret Whitworth, one of the

best footballers in the country during

the ban, whose career illustrates the

remarkable difference in attitudes to

women’s football between England

and the rest of the world.

Whitworth, now 75,

played for Manchester

Corinthians, a team

brought together

under the management

of Percy Ashley

in 1949. The

team toured

the world

promoting

the sport

and

raising

money for

charity —

alongside

Nomads,

another

women’s

team, by 1969

Tomorrow’s FA Cup

final will be broadcast

to millions but it wasn’t

like this a century ago,

Molly Hudson writes

During Yeovil Town’s FA Cup match

against Stevenage this evening, a flag

commemorating Lee Collins, Yeovil’s

former captain, will be held up in the

Thatcher’s Stand. It will be a reminder

that although those on the pitch will be

playing the biggest game of their

season, some things are more impor-

tant than football.

Collins, 32, took his own life last

‘Lee is still our inspirational leader’

Captain’s death at age

of 32 last season has

brought team closer

together, his successor

tells Molly Hudson

1

m

w

Whitworth, second

from right, on tour.

Below: White with

Baroness Campbell

Arsenal v

Chelsea

Women’s FA Cup final

Tomorrow, 2pm

BBC One, BT Sport 1

i