Football Daily - INTRODUCING - Iconic: The Rise of the Women in Red

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

On the day Wales name their 23-player squad for this summers Euros, Football Daily brings you the first episode of a brand new series – ‘Iconic: The Rise of the Women in Red’, with Wales' most capped player Jess Fishlock. After a 50-year ban on women playing football, Wales don’t have an official team until a pivotal meeting with the FAW in the early 1990’s. But even then, the players face playing in handed down, oversized men’s kit and being led by part-time. Subscribe to the series on BBC Sounds now for more episodes – www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m0023mz7.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Welcome to The Inside Track with me, Rick Edwards. This is the podcast that takes you inside Formula One and Red Bull Racing like never before. And I'm Matt Magindy. And thanks to my exclusive access, I'll be getting up close and personal with Red Bull Racing this season. And this week I'll be answering your questions and you can literally ask me anything. I just think Matt will probably regret that. 2023 Dutch Grand Prix, I think it was practice,

he crashed and he left one hand on the steering wheel, he'd end up breaking his wrist. Experience Formula One like never before by tuning into the inside track, wherever you get your podcasts. You know, I always joke with my wife that it's the longest relationship I for sure ever had. And it's been a turbulent relationship.

The journey to Euro 2025 starts now. Is this their time? We're about to find out. Oh, this is a chance. Fish lock! Yeah! It just happened to be! They are through to the playoffs.

They are history makers. This is essentially a story about a football team trying to qualify for a major tournament. But in reality, it's about so much more than that. Women's football was banned. All women's sport was an afterthought. You were always told, well that's a men's game, that's different. He gave us all the reasons why women would never play for Wales. It's a story that's taken decades and generations. It would be all girls are playing, we'll give you a bit more next time.

We had men's kit didn't we, it was massive. A generation has had success stolen from them because of decisions that were made many years ago. It's a story of highs, lows and heartbreaks. Wales' star player has scored perhaps the most important goal of every Wales career. One thing that the players and the team did so well was to really capture the nation and that Bosnia game was special. Oh my goodness, they've scored! Switzerland have won it with the last kick of the game! I've never felt pain like that on a football pitch.

I couldn't cry because I had nothing left in me. I was so drained from that whole week. It means so much to everybody. This is now or never for me. But it's a story that might just have a happy ending. Yes! Oh, yes! They have scored!

The glass ceiling is breaking. The respect the team has for the women that came before and built this against all odds and against a lot of pushback. And yet we stand on other people's shoulders. We just happened to be the three to walk into that office that day. Wales lead by two goals to Neil and take a giant leap towards their first ever major finals. Once that genie's out of the bottle,

I think women's football in Wales will go to stratospheric heights. What's that saying? Well-behaved women never make history, right? I'm Jess Fishlock, and this is Iconic. The rise of the women in red. Episode one, pioneers. I love my country, I love Wales,

and I think I honestly really do just want to see Wales, the women's team specifically, succeed. I'll get to hang up my boots now and be happy with my career, more than happy. But I think going to a major tournament with Wales, it's just something that I want more than anything. And yes it is! The icon becomes a legend.

Jess Mishelaw is Wales' all-time leading goalscorer. She runs to the near side, puts her arms outstretched, and accepts the applause on a historic moment. They are there. 28 teams left. Only seven places remain in Switzerland next year for the Euros. No one has scored more goals or won more caps for Wales than me. I've won trophies in five different countries, but like Wales, I have never played in the finals of a major international tournament.

But our chance to change that and make history is coming. Euro 2025 in Switzerland will be a monumental moment for football in this country. But this isn't just about me. This isn't even just about this current Wales team. This is about generations of women and girls who have all played their part in getting us to this point. Long before I even kicked a ball as a child, there was a ban on women playing football in the UK between 1921 and 1971. Only when that ban was lifted did a Wales women's team play their first ever game. And this is where our story begins and where the battle starts. I'm Michelle Adams and I made my debut in 1973.

It was at Stebenheath Park in Llanelli 13th May 1973 and it absolutely bucketed down for the whole day. We borrowed a kit from Swansea Men. The kit got heavier, the pitch got heavier. We played Ireland and we lost 3-2. It was run by a group of volunteers from the whole of Wales and some or

another, these guys got together. It was run by an Irishman, guy called John Rooney actually started it all up. He got people from North Wales, South Wales, West Wales and so on. I'm Karen Jones and I made my Wales debut in 1977. We were in that mindset that whatever we had, we had to go and do it ourselves. We had to fight for everything because the women's game was relatively new. A lot of it was mickey-taking of the women playing football at those times. We weren't really considered as athletes.

We considered ourselves as athletes. We trained as hard as the men did. But I think it was just a case of, that's how it was. So if we had to get training sessions, we had to pay for hotels ourselves and the transports ourselves. We didn't know anything different. We didn't play anywhere near as many games as they do now. It was normally one or two a season. That went right through until about 1987, 1988 perhaps.

And for some reason it just stopped. I can't remember why. I'm Laura McAllister and I made my Wales debut in 1993. There wasn't really a Wales team when I came back from university because I'd played a little bit whilst I was in London. And then when I came back, I joined Cardiff City Ladies through Michelle and Karen.

But you know, whenever we talked about the Welsh national team, the girls had explained to me that the former system was one that had been arranged on a voluntary basis outside the auspices of the Football Association of Wales. And I think at that time there weren't games happening, if I remember rightly. So it was a bit of a vacuum really,

and that's in many respects was why I started agitating and talking to the girls about the need to get the Football Association of Wales involved because it seemed ludicrous that there was such a strong level of club football with such great athletes and technical ability and no international team to represent them. But as Karen and Michelle have said, they were very much the pioneers because they had to do it without any support really from anybody official. And I do think sometimes that's the generation of players, people who came before you girls as well, who haven't really been properly recognised, you know, because without them

we would never have been in a position to lobby the FAW when we did Later Down the Line. I would say one of the long journeys with Cardiff, with our club on the mini bus, and it was probably a little bit of ranting and raving why we didn't have a Welsh national team and somebody has organised us. Laura said, well, why don't we do something about it then and we'll go and... I wouldn't say organise, that's not one of my strong points, but certainly, certainly I think I've always been somebody who feels very strongly about equality and been quite prepared to stick my neck out and agitate or campaign for things.

There was no international team at that time. And it just seemed completely unfair that a young man of our generation would have the opportunities to represent his country. But a young female football always just as talented wouldn't have had that opportunity. So I think it was that sort of railing against the unfairness really, which made us or got us to the point where we wrote formally, wasn't it? It was. And also it was the English system was up and going. So we could see England starting off under the guys of the FA. We could see Ireland and Scotland, you know, sort of doing the same type of thing. And yet nobody had mentioned it in Wales, nobody. You know, there wasn't

something from the FAW. And I think that's what got us really, wasn't it, at the time? It was, you know, why isn't it happening here? But I think as well, you've got to contextualise this by what the FAW was at the time. I don't think there was any strategy or plan for any aspect of football at that time in Wales. It was merely a case of managing the international men's teams fixtures and probably the under-21s. There wasn't even an effective youth system for boys at that time. So we've got to make sure that we understand the context in which this was happening in the 1990s. So it's no wonder really that women's football wasn't on anybody's radar

because it would have required somebody who was involved in the women's game to have been on the council of the FAW to be raising these issues in a board meeting. At this point in time, I was only five or six. I'm not sure if I'd even started playing football at all at this point. But without what happened next, who knows what I or any of the current Wales players would be doing right now. Laura Cowan and Michelle meet with the then Secretary General of the FAW, Alan Evans, to discuss an official national team. I can't even begin to tell you how pivotal a moment this is in our story. I guess we must have written to him.

You wrote, Lor. Yeah, I think I wrote to him. It was a pretty straightforward letter, if I remember rightly. I mean, we should try to write that somewhere, I guess. It was very much, you know, a formal letter saying, you know, we're writing as current players of Cardiff City and we feel there should be an international women's team to recognise the talent that's out there. Would you be prepared to meet with

us to have a conversation? And I don't think we expected a response, did we? We thought it would be just chucked at the bottom of the in-tray. But in fairness to Alain, he did come back to us and offered us a meeting in Westgate Street where the FAW was based at that time. We think it's 92, yeah. Early 92 as well we think. The carpet. The carpet, the red carpet with the emblem on, yeah. Up the stairs, knocked on the headmaster's door as it seemed. Big huge wooden desk and this very intimidating man sat behind it.

What I can remember, he gave us all the reasons why women would never play for Wales. We put our case to him. The only thing I can remember about the actual meeting was Alain quite expectedly setting out the reasons why it was difficult to establish a women's team from scratch in effect, because it would be the first time the FAW would run the team, and what the cost would be and how tight the purse strings were at that time. And I think in fairness, you know, he probably came into it with a very sceptical attitude, but even at the end of that sort of half hour, I think he'd softened a little bit, hadn't

he? Even though he didn't give us any sign that things were going to progress quickly. I do remember that it was either the following week or certainly the next home game where he turned up at one of our home games on July Park. He had his two boys with him. They were only youngsters then, eating ice cream and his wife. And I don't even think he spoke to us really, did he, after the game? And he from there got in touch with one of us, but he was hooked from there. Well, he came back, didn't he? He came back with Des Shankly. Yes, he did.

He brought, it was Treasure at the time. Yeah. They came then, the two of them came to watch another game at Trelai. Yeah, I remember him down in Truro. We played at Truro, we went on a minibus, and there he was, sat on the bank, reading a book. Reading a book, waiting for us to do nothing.

Waiting for us to beat, yeah. Two things that are really critical about Alan Evans' involvement was that, one, once he was hooked, he was hooked, but also Two things that are really critical about Allen Evans' involvement was that one, once he was hooked, he was hooked. But also the fact that he pulled all the strings at the FAW. So if you could get him to the position where he wanted something to happen, you know, these weren't the days of presenting a paper to the board and having feedback and decision by the executive team. This was the days when the secretary general decided everything basically.

And once he decided he wanted this to happen, then there was no turning back really. I can remember him ringing me after he'd seen a couple of games and saying in that kind of gruff, understated way that he always did, oh, it's not too bad, you know, as if, you know, damning with faint praise really. And I'm, you know, I'm going to look into potentially doing something now. But I don't think he said what he was going to do. I mean, we hoped it would be to enter a team into the European Championship qualifiers, obviously, because that was the big opportunity for us to start. Away from the league,

it might just have escaped people's attention that Wales were involved in a European Championship soccer match against Switzerland. But this time there was no Rush or Hughes, Saunders or Geeks. There was O'Brien and O'Sullivan, Davis and Jones in Wales's women's team. By then, in 1993-94 season,

he'd entered, registered a national team to take part in the UEFA Qualifiers. We were drawn with Switzerland, Germany and Croatia. And then to cut down on all the costs we had to do three games in six days. Away games. Away games. So we flew from country to country. Our first one was Germany and we went to Switzerland and then we played Croatia which is like a big adventure for us wasn't it because we hadn't been cheated

like that before and that was the big start really wasn't it then. But it was the Swiss that was the big start really wasn't it then but it was the swiss that had the edge in scoring not surprising really given their much greater experience at this level nicky davies popped in wales's second with a sort of speculative shot young master gigs would be pleased with three two to switzerland still no disgrace in that when you consider they would have been together three weeks, we were, you know, one foot squad training really, a very, very consequence apart from together on the weekend before the matches. So I thought they did very, very well. My name's Clare O'Sullivan.

I made my debut versus Iceland in 1993. Yes, we had old shirts. We had, you know, and I don't think after the time they were the senior shirts, they were the 19 shirts. But that first trip, we had one tracksuit, which is a really shiny red one, I got the pictures, and one t-shirt for eight days, and we lived in them. My name is Catherine Morgan, I made my Wales debut in Stebenheath in Llanelli in 1995. My first shirt was a XXXL men's, I was tiny. The heel came up to the top of my calf.

It was heavy. It was the old umbral long sleeve style, you know, things like that. But your heart was melting with pride that you were playing for Wales. It didn't really matter what we had, what we didn't have. We were there. We were singing the national anthem. You know, we were playing competitive football. Really didn't matter. You had the badge on you and that's all that mattered. This is Five Live Sports. The Football Daily Podcast. Welcome to The Inside Track with me, Rick Edwards. This is the podcast that takes you inside Formula One and Red Bull Racing like never before.

And I'm Matt Magendie and thanks to my exclusive access, I'll be getting up close and personal with Red Bull Racing this season. And this week I'll be answering your questions and you can literally ask me anything. I think Matt will probably regret that. 2023 Dutch Grand Prix, I think it was practice, he crashed and he left one hand on the steering wheel and ended up breaking his wrist. Experience Formula One like never before by tuning into the inside track wherever you get your podcasts. From my very first game, I knew that I wanted to be a goalkeeper. The buzz and the adrenaline that I got from it.

The dream was to always represent my country. Marriott, desperate to impress. I can remember her saying, I know I've got what it takes. And crucial save from us. You have to be obsessed. Marriott to the second save. You just look at some of the saves that she makes. Not everyone can do that. I really had no idea really how far I would go.

England around dawn at the dead. It felt like my world was ending. That was the moment. I felt like my world was ending. That was the moment. I was in pieces on the kitchen floor. You have to hit rock bottom to understand what you really want. Mary would put herself in front of anything and feel like she could stop it.

I've done something that I've always dreamed of doing and never knew if I would get the opportunity to do. Mary Earps, Queen of Stops. Watch on BBC iPlayer. The Football Daily Podcast on BBC Sounds. Even though you look back and you can go, well surely the kit man, surely he knows that whether you're female or male, you need more than one T-shirt for eight days away. But because it was the first thing ever,

and this time I'm not now, I was very grateful then. However, now as an older female trying to inspire young girls, I stopped being grateful after about five, six years of that treatment. Hi, I'm Jane Luddlow. I made my Wales senior debut in 1996. Most of the time it was just pitch and a change room. If you were lucky, there was a toilet there as well.

No female thought process around what should be needed for a female athlete. There were many times with different managers, when we'd turn up to a training venue that you could see the manager wanting to blow a gasket because it was just nowhere near up to standard. We'd have been better training on the Rickos Mountain at times with some of the pitches we ended up going to. We'd have been better training on the Riccoc Mountain at times

with some of the pitches we ended up going to. Yeah, there wasn't much preparation. I mean, even when you talk about me being a mid-20 year old player playing for Arsenal, the preparation still for our national team was poor. And it's not necessarily a slight on any of the coaches or the performance services staff involved. It was more what was being asked of them and the strategy around the consideration about how female football was seen within the country

and the association. And I reflect back and it wasn't great. There were lots of times that I would go from Arsenal where I was really looked after. I felt very much part of the community, supported and made to feel the best I could be and supported to do that. Whereas Wales was very much the opposite and I think the younger national team players at the time who might have looked up to me probably couldn't figure me out in that sense because I wasn't particularly happy. After the girls retired we were getting obviously a new generation of young players coming through you know like Sir Jane Ledlow for example and they were playing for decent clubs, big clubs in some cases so so their expectations were higher. And I was captain for

some of that period, so I think our expectations were already higher at that point. It was just a matter of how do we get from where we are now to where we all want to be. And I think that was quite a tense period for the women's national team because some of us who'd been there at the beginning, and you know, obviously I wasn't even there at the real beginning of this were very conscious that you know a softly softly approach was going to work better with the FAW whereas some of the players who'd come in were impatient for things to happen and that's not a bad thing don't get me wrong you know because we all wanted things to improve but we were

also conscious that we had no status really and we had no guarantee that things would continue. Wales men, I do understand, were not successful. I probably understand that success brings more revenue and because Wales weren't successful, therefore the money would always go to the men, it would never come to the women and it was a kind of, we've got you on board, so be quiet. Our first Argoff Cup 2002, couldn't believe that we were allowed to go to a final tournament. Quite a big party, obviously.

People had to take 10 days off work, so unpaid leave. We get to the tournament, there's council members and their wives on the trip. We each receive an envelope for 10 days. We open the envelope and there's 10 pounds in it. So we had one pound a day expenses. We look back at that going one pound a day. At the time we were mortified.

We didn't say a word because we were actually in the tournament. We were always having to invest time and energy in persuading them that this was important because effectively they could have pulled the plug on the international team at any point and we'd be back to square one. Cause I can remember lots of council members saying to me don't raise that now don't argue for that now because you know they'll pull the plug on the whole setup. Hello I'm Michael Pellman I'm a sports reporter with the BBC. When we talk about a lack of support for the women's game it number one reflects society and in

number two reflects the fact that the Football Association of Wales was not a modern forward-thinking organisation with a billion men in blazers who all work at a regional level making decisions on a national basis about essentially a multi-million pound company. Things have really, really changed with Welsh football and that includes the men's side. So if women's football was an afterthought and it definitely was, that wasn't just through kind of misogyny or mistreatment of the women's game. It also, we need to reflect the fact that the FAW just wasn't a very forward thinking or modern organisation. And I think that was because they never saw a way that it would repay any kind

of investment. I think they always saw it as we'd look good if we did it. But what else will we get out of it? Hello, my name is Dave Adams. I'm the technical director, chief football officer for the FA of Wales. I've been in post since October 2019. Very hard for me to comment on, I suppose, the sort of the history of it. All I can say really, I suppose, is it probably wasn't fair or respectful to those athletes at that time. I mean, my view is I got a daughter myself, I suppose, you know, so you'd hope that any opportunity that my son's afforded, my daughter's afforded, I know, and I would, I would endorse that as a parent. All I can say, I suppose now is what we've tried to do and we're moving in that direction.

I would say we've, we've definitely got a lot more equality. We're doing a lot of catch up in this space and I think we didn't invest proportionally on both sides. And all I can say now is we're doing that, I suppose, and we hope that we can make quick progress in this space, you know, and that's what we're trying to do really is to make sure that we can consistently qualify for major tournaments. There wasn't enough blue sky thinking, there wasn't enough foresight from the FAW. They didn't see actually as society changes equality for women and because they didn't

see that coming, they never saw a business reason to support women's football. It wasn't a priority because frankly, you know, just promoting the game at all was the priority because Wales was a rugby country. Now just think about that lack of investment for a moment as we find out what happened next. We're now at the turn of the century and I was still a few years away from making my Wales debut. Victories on the pitch were few and far between at this point

and let's be honest the dream of reaching a major tournament seemed a long long way away but ahead of qualifying for Euro 2005 in England that dream was taken away before a ball had even been kicked. So 2003, the draw had been made for the European championships. We had Israel, Kazakhstan, and the FAW had a fine for the first time. And it was documented in the Western Mail that they had a fine for withdrawing a team

after the draw was being made. You know, it is devastating. You don't play football for a year and a half. It was all a case of oh god UEFA are making us fulfil this fixture. Again people will have a certain viewpoint on me retiring but it coincided with with how that decision was made and reasoning behind it but you know what we were told was actually we've drawn somebody we just can't afford to go there. UEFA weren't helping as much as they would have liked so we can't play So we might as well pull you out of the competition. So for two years we didn't play a game, I think.

So, you know, as a national team player, you're going, what is this about? That was always the fear. And, you know, it's always been like that in women's sport. You know, there's always been that kind of agenda of we can't afford it, which is ludicrous, because it suggests that there's less of an imperative to invest in girls playing any sport than there is in boys.

You've got to realise as well that it's not as if the men had fantastic resource or facility at that time. If you talk to the players of our generation, people like Dean Saunders and so on, they will tell you that their facilities and the conditions and the hotels and everything else weren't of the highest standard for them. But incredibly disappointing because who knows how many players we lost potentially to other sports or to football altogether from pulling the plug even for a short period of time from qualifying. There were some decisions made that weren't in the best interest of the female game. If those decisions were different, we'd be far further ahead and we would have qualified for a national tournament by now.

I have no doubt about that. So before 2011, we never had a full-time coach. We just had like a day coach sometimes. Like we would go to qualifiers and have our manager fly in the day of the game whilst we were out there, take the game because he would have another job and then leave. Caused a few problems didn't it? Adrian Tucker, former Wales women's head coach

between the years 2006 to 2009. I suppose it was a little bit of an add-on to what I was doing at the Welsh Football Trust. We were probably spinning a lot of plates at the time. We were what we were, and we tried to do as much as we could. So I'd always argue with anybody to say we didn't do enough for the girls.

We put as much as we could into the girls at the time. Unfortunately, we wanted more, the girls wanted more, but with budgets or constraints at the time from the Football Association of Wales or whatever, it wasn't possible. It became more difficult and I can't remember whether it was myself when I took the role at Swansea. I tried to have a bit of a balance because it was a bit of a crossover. My role at Swansea became a little bit more difficult to spend more time with Wales. I had to make a decision, but I couldn't just drop Wales because that would have left them with nothing. But we had to try and find that period of crossover.

I think on one occasion I was late to get into a game or in the lead up to a game because Swansea were my full-time employees at the end of the day and I was doing the Welsh job as a part-time. But I'd also go back and say I actually got married on a Sunday afternoon just outside of Cardiff and I left my wife this following morning to travel out to Switzerland for a doubleheader. So I think that shows a little bit commitment. I don't know whether people knew that as well. We were kind of fighting at that point that we needed a full-time manager, but they were like, no, your manager will fly out and meet you the day of the game

and you can go through everything then. And I think that was not really at a tipping point, but we were starting to kind of fight for more probably at that point. Not sure how much influence I had at the time. And I tried lots of different avenues and at times it was just pure frustration. It could be an end of a game moment, which is inappropriate.

But we were never really given an opportunity to speak to the decision makers. So the only route we had was to speak and challenge the coaching group with us. And to be fair to those coaches, as time went on, and the more I understand since, and I've been meaning the role, there were a lot of restrictions around what they wanted to do. Jane had frustrations with football at the time within the national environment, no doubt. I've spoken to Jane since and she's appreciative of what we had to go through at the time. But Jane was a professional football player, the lead individual within the Wales women's set-up at the time. She was playing for Arsenal, Arsenal were winning everything.

And when it came to Wales for Jane, it was probably second rate to her. She wanted more. I understood that. But what probably Jane didn't understand at the time is the things and the barriers which were in the way for me as a head coach or for my staff. Jane was a good part of the progress of women's football, but I don't know if it was friction,

it was friction, frustration. It's no different to any other day in the life of football. I retired more than once, because it was the bit of, I love playing for my country, but I got to a point, I was like, I can't change this. I guess now, we're 20 years, 30 years down the line, I understand how to influence a little bit better. But when you reflect back now, as a player,

I had a certain viewpoint on things, and it was very much how do we change this for the better so that the next generation don't feel unworthy like we did or like I did and you know the one person who helped them immensely and I hope they still have very good relationships with him was Yarmou Matakainen. Next time on Iconic the rise of the women in red. The finish and Wells humour, they did seem to meet eye to eye quite well. To have Emily in my prime, I was 28, there was that worry of, can I do it, can I get

back? The surgeon said he'd never seen anyone come back from this injury. I'm waiting on a third operation now because the damage there actually needed a knee replacement. I remember stepping on that pitch and a lot of people wrote us off straight away. All Wales v England. England are going to win. And the Welsh goalkeeper, with her outstanding display, has created history. It's the first point Wales have ever taken off England. My phone went berserk.

But for me, went to bed, got up and went to Peppa Pig World the next day. I just think it was one of those games where we should be winning. We had a bit more than them. Close towards the goalkeeper who tips it and Ireland have equalised it to death! That was quite scary to think. We might have already messed it up before even playing that game because it came down to goal difference.

Welcome to The Inside Track with me, Rick Edwards. This is the podcast that takes you inside Formula One and Red Bull Racing like never before. And I'm Matt Magindy. And thanks to my exclusive access, I'll be getting up close and personal with Red Bull Racing this season. And this week I'll be answering your questions and you can literally ask me anything. I think Matt will probably regret that. 2023 Dutch Grand Prix, I think it was practice, he crashed and he left one hand on the steering wheel and ended up breaking his wrist. Experience Formula One like never before by tuning into the inside track wherever you get your podcasts.