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Joan Whalley
| Category: | Female Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2007 |
Joan Whalley was born in Preston in 1921. Her father bought her a pair of boots when she was five. She went to the same school as the great Tom Finney and they even played football together on the park. She realised a dream of playing for the famous Dick Kerr Ladies team, making her debut on Coronation day 1937. She played for 20 years, and an article in the Daily Express after the war reported that along with Finney, Preston had the two greatest right wingers in the game. After she retired she could not bear to watch a game as she wanted to carry on playing, but remarkably in 1996 she was persuaded to become the first woman footballer to feature in a high profile national advertising campaign, when Nike employed her to publicise their sportswear alongside Michael Jordan, Ian Wright and Eric Cantona. Before she died in 1998 she said “It's been with me all my life, a love of football. I've never known anyone love it like I did.”