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Lily Parr
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2002 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of Football's Greatest Heroes, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Lily Parr, ‘the most brilliant female player in the world', according to one newspaper, provided the biggest draw card for tens of thousands of supporters who regularly watched women's football at the height of its popularity.
There was such a clamour to see Parr in action for Dick, Kerr Ladies, the leading women's team in England , that officials had to close the turnstiles at Goodison Park in Liverpool in 1920.
Parr gave an outstanding performance at outside-left in the 4-0 victory over St Helens Town . The attendance of 53,000 is still a record for the women's game at club level in this country.
‘Taking sex and age into consideration, there is probably no greater football prodigy in the country than Miss Parr, the outside-left of the famous Dick, Kerr Ladies,' The Reporter newspaper stated in 1921.
At the height of its popularity in the 1920s, the team featured on cinema newsreels, and match reports appeared regularly in newspapers.
In her first season, at the age of 14, Parr scored 43 goals. She played on until her mid-40s. Throughout her career she was renowned for the strength of her shooting, her ‘great kicking power', as one American newspaper put it in 1922.
The previous year the Preston-based team played 67 games in aid of charity all over Britain , watched by a total of 900,000 people. Throughout its 48-year existence, the team rose £175,000.
Dick, Kerr Ladies originally drew players from the women working in a munitions factory during the First World War. The team enjoyed universal support for its efforts on behalf of charity. The Ladies' first ever game, on Christmas Day, 1917, attracted 10,000 to Deepdale, the home of Preston North End, raising £600.
At the end of hostilities, the team stayed together. Although the side continued to earn money for good causes, there was increasing concern in the men's game that the ongoing popularity of Dick, Kerr Ladies and other women's teams was drawing custom, and potential income, from professional Football League clubs.
In 1921, the Football Association acted, introducing a draconian set of restrictions. Women footballers were no longer allowed to play on any Football League ground – a ban that stood until 1978, forcing the women to hire rugby grounds.
During the 48 years the team was together, Dick, Kerr Ladies played 828 games, winning 758, drawing 46 and losing only 24 times, an average of one defeat every two years.
The most important member of the team at its peak, Parr was made an honorary life member of the amateur club when she retired from football in 1951 at the age of 45.
Though widely praised for her overall play and reading of the game, Parr was renowned for possessing the strongest shot of any woman footballer. This, more than anything, excited spectators and earned the headlines in newspapers.