A notice in a shop window

How a hand-written card in a newsagent's window became a women's league with forty teams.

By Hana Shehu | 13 August 2026| 10 min read

The card said: Women's football. Tuesdays, 7pm. Bring boots if you have them. Pat Lewis wrote it in biro and paid the newsagent fifty pence a week to keep it up.

“Six people came the first week. I'd brought twelve oranges.”
Pat Lewis

Thirty years later the league has forty teams and the card is framed in the clubhouse.

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