Alma Kelly and the Weston Women

Daily Telegraph, Thursday 13 September 1928, page 27

This story line has taken me a little by surprise. I knew that women's teams had sprung up all around Australia in the 1920s but I hadn't drawn a connection between this phenomenon and Weston. Reading 'Mothering the Matildas: The trailblazers who kickstarted Australian women's football' by Paul Nichols published in 2018 would have helped. He writes

In Newcastle, that great cradle of Australian football, a series of matches between women’s teams from Abermain and Weston were played during August and September 1928.

In one match, The Cessnock Eagle and South Maitland Recorder reported that Weston’s Alma Kelly scored after a ‘dazzlingly brilliant run.’ 

So it turns out that women in Weston started agitating to play football as early as 1928 (probably earlier). Nicholls continues, the "enthusiasm of the women could not be stopped. By the end of September, another four teams had been formed at Bellbird, Cessnock, East Greta, and Kurri North End."

A reporter at an early game wrote "players from Abermain and Weston held the stage, and after a fast and strenuous game Abermain won by 2 goals to 1. Abermain looked very neat in gold jerseys and black shorts. ... Weston affected blue and gold jerseys, with black skirts."

This ongoing series of games resulted in Weston meeting Speers Point at the Sydney Sports Stadium in what was according to some, the final of the Women's State Cup in 1929, though the following report from the Newcastle Sun (14 November 1929, page 2) tones it down a little. Moreover, the event was under auspices of the "Australian Sports Company" and not an official soccer body. Nonetheless the article gives a good insight into the progress of women's football in the late 1920s.

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SOCCER GIRLS

Exhibition in Sydney

At Sydney Sports Ground on Saturday night two women's soccer teams from the Coalfields and Newcastle will meet in an exhibition soccer match. The teams are Weston and Speer's Point.

The were invited by the Australian Sporting Association, of which Mr. Jack Munro is manager, to visit Sydney and play on the Sports Ground on the opening night. The girls will play 20 minutes each way, with an interval of 10 minutes. Mr. H. Adkins, an English referee, is to officiate. A white ball will be used nnd the game will be played under electric light. Weston girls will play in Weston's recognised Black and White shirts, and will be represented by: Goal. Jennie Bryson; backs. Freda Hallam and Maggie Reid; half backs, Nellie Hure, Doris Outram and Chrissie Mitchell: forwards. Mary Hanley, Eileen Hanley, Alma Kelly, Mary Allen and Myrtle Holmes, Mildred Brogan is emergency. Mr. J. W. Grigg is to manage the Weston girls. Speer's Point girls will be looked after by Speer's Point secretary, Mr. Jack Brown. They will play in canary shirts and have chosen the following players: Goal, Elizabeth Sager; backs. Valeria Thornton and Ken Kerr; half backs, Ivy Cadman Melvie Kerr and Beatrice Ninnis; forwards, Maud Reid, May Fulton, Vire Roy. Abie Kerr and Sona Anderson: with Bella Roy emergency. The girls' soccer match is part of a programme which includes whippet racing, bicycle races and handicaps. Should the game prove successful it is intended to ask the winner to meet Corrimal (South Coast) girls the following week, and a week later to stage a representative northern (Newcastle and Maitland) v. South Coast women's soccer match. This would lead up to an all State girls' competition, which Mr. Grigg is anxious to run for charity in 1930.

So here we have the first recorded team list of Weston women and a sense of the ambition around the women's game.

Sadly, the great plans did not come to fruition. No general growth in the women's game was observed, though women's football in Lithgow boomed over the next few years. Organisers at least got a game up in Corrimal, but minus a Corrimal team. Weston and Speers Point played again.

The game was previewed by the Illawarra Mercury (4 April 1930, page 17)

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Ladies at Football.

At the Corrimal Memorial Park on Saturday afternoon lovers of Soccer football will have an opportunity of witnessing the first game of Soccer football played on the South Coast by two ladies' teams. The contesting teams will be Weston v Speers Point, both from the North, and as the proceeds are to go to the distress in the Northern coalfields, the promoters hope to see a record attendance present. The kick-off takes place at 3.30' p.m.

The Labor Daily (17 April 1930, page 2) published the following photo (with a typically silly headline) of the Speers Point Women.

And this seems to be where the ambitions conclude. Despite raising money for miners' relief, the teams reverted to the more informal structure of the past two years. They sought and received permission from Kurri Kurri Soccer Club to use the Drill Hall ground on Friday 9 May. It seems that Weston had morphed into Kurri-Weston in the meantime, which maybe presages some movements in the men's teams a decade later.

The game was previewed in the Newcastle Sun (8 May 1930, page 3):

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Women's Soccer Match

At the Kurri Drill Hall ground tomorrow afternoon. Kurri-Weston women's Soccer team will meet Speer's Point women's team in a charity Soccer match. These two teams have met four times and have won two games each. Before the match there will be a fancy dress match. Following is the team selected to represent Kurri -Weston:— Ivy Shakespeare (goal); Freda Halam, Jenny Bryson, (backs); Maggie Dodds, Vida Holmes, C. Mitchell (half-backs): Hannah Purdy, S. Williams. Myrtle Holmes, M. Brogan, Mary Allen (forwards). Emergencies: Bessie Sullivan and J. Kelly.

A big crowd was reported at Kurri for a repeat game in May, Speers Point again winning 1-0. (Despite the claim that the record stood at two games apiece prior to this game, I can only find a record of Speers Point winning 1-0, repeatedly)

Another Weston (+Kurri) team list, which is a bonus. However, one absence is Alma Kelly, previously such a central figure in Weston's women's team. She scored what might have been the first goal for Weston women, against Abermain, and was the talismanic captain, focused on by the press. One report of an earlier game against Speers Point recounts:

Alma Kelly, in a black and white striped Jersey, brought Weston, her team, to the kick-off, and solemnly shook hands with Beth Sagar, captain of Speer's Point team. "Go it. Alma!" shrieked the Weston supporters In the grandstand.

Kelly seems to have been a gregarious girl who stood out at whatever she did. As well as her football exploits, she tended to win dancing contests and seemed quite popular among her peers. 

"A game for women Soccer at Weston has become, but those who think it has grown effete thereby are introduced to Alma Kelly, the captain." Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 20 August 1929, page 14

No doubt she was an imposing player. Her absence at Kurri is most likely innocuous. However, her subsequent story is a one of a personal decline because of social forces much bigger than the game of football.

In 1934. under the mistaken belief that she was in a "certain condition" she took an "implement" to herself and ended up dying from peritonitis at the age of 23 on April 24. We can read so much into this story that would be pure (albeit reasonable) speculation. But it is indeed tragic that someone who could have helped lead the development of women's football in the region ended up dead from a common cause: self administered abortion in a society that frowned upon sexual expression and a woman's ability and right to choose an appropriate medical intervention.

Trove contains little information on Weston women after May 1930. I'll keep looking but I figure the impetus had gone from the women's game in the region, at least at that point in history.