I thought about posting this on Sport but there seems to be no traffic there.
As people may or may not know, the 2019 Women's World Cup in France starts on Friday (although England and Scotland aren't playing until Sunday and, ironically, are playing each other).
However, it was only today that I came across the story of the 1971 World Cup which is the first time that England women played internationally.
My DD plays football quite competitively at university and I always thought that women's football was quite a recent thing.
I really had no idea that back when I was just six years old, there was an England women's team competing in a World Cup. Or even, as I learnt from the BBC, that women's teams during world war one had crowds of up to 50,000 watching them play or that the FA banned women's football in 1921.
I don't know if I'm particularly naive for not knowing these things but, to be frank, it did come as a bit of a shock to me.
Anyway, I did find this piece on the BBC website very enlightening and an interesting read, along with plenty of photos and some video from the time and would recommend it, particularly if you are old enough to remember the 70s:-
The lost lionesses - England's forgotten football trailblazers
When a team of English teenagers walked out in front of 90,000 boisterous fans at Mexico City's Azteca Stadium for a crucial World Cup match in 1971, it was unlike anything they had ever known at home.
In England, women's teams usually played in parks with a handful of spectators. Women's football had been banned by the FA for the previous 50 years. This is the story of that forgotten, pioneering team - and why they were decades ahead of their time.