Merseyside for Sport - Sylvia Gore

 

 

 

Sylvia Margaret Gore MBE was born on the 25th of November, 1944 in Prescot, Merseyside and, after leaving Our Ladies’ Junior School, she attended St Edmund Arrowsmith Secondary School. With her father and uncle both playing football for Prescot Cables, they encouraged Sylvia to take up the game. The headteacher of her school vetoed any participation in the school team but, when twelve years old, she joined Manchester Corinthians and spent her teenage years taking two buses to travel there for matches, accompanied by her parents. Because of the FA's ban on women's football, forbidding them to play on official grounds, she had to play on poor pitches with equally poor changing facilities. Sylvia gleefully recounted later in life that, instead of showers, she and her team-mates would have to use buckets of freezing cold water, or just jump into a nearby duck pond, to have a wash after a match. The FA ban saw her leave her office job to travel abroad, playing in charity matches all over the world with the Corinthians. She recalled, "It was incredible playing in those great stadiums. In one of them, in South America, 80,000 people watched us play. Although we were getting good crowds in England, it was so nice to play on proper football pitches, rather than on the rugby and recreation pitches we had at home."

Sylvia, centre, training with the England team at Wembley, 1972.

 

Sylvia also played for Fodens, joining in 1967 in what was originally a works team from the Edwin Foden, Sons & Co. lorry manufacturing plant in Sandbach, Cheshire, helping them to a shock win over the all conquering Southampton Ladies' three-year domination of the FA Cup in the 1974 Women's FA Cup Final. Known as the 'Denis Law' of women’s football, she once scored 134 goals in a season. In 1972 she paid around £2,000 to progress through a series of trials for the first England team and after years playing club football, at a time when the sport was still formally banned in England for women, Sylvia was named in the FA-sanctioned starting XI on on the 18th of November 1972 as an attacking midfielder. She already had a strong reputation for technical skill and goal-scoring prowess, before the moment when, in torrential rain, she gathered the ball in her own half and ran the length of the pitch before side-footing it into the net becoming the first female footballer to score for England, in a 3-2 victory over Scotland.
At the age of 35, her career was ended after a severe back injury, but her exuberance and enthusiasm for the game were not extinguished. Upon retiring from playing she managed the Wales International Women's team in 1982-89, and acted as secretary to Liverpool FC Ladies, while continuing to coach and encourage a new generation of women across the north-west, in addition to serving as women's football development officer for Knowsley Council over three decades. She was also part of the Women's FA, which organised and ran women's football in England before the FA took over in 1993, after which she sat on the FA's Women's Committee for 20 years before then serving as a delegate for the Women's Super League, launched in 2011. In 1999, she won a special achievement award at the inaugural FA Women’s Awards and was awarded an MBE for services to the game in 2000, the same year she was honoured by UEFA in Monte Carlo. In 2014 Sylvia became the first female director of the Liverpool County FA. In 2014 she was inducted into the National Football Museum Hall of Fame but sadly passed away in 2016.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2026/09/merseyside-for-sport-colin-harvey.html