Some of you will have seen a piece in The Times today penned by sports writer Simon Barnes which refers to possibly the first ever women’s rugby player – and we need your help piecing together the background of a fascinating tale.
Simon wrote a piece in1985 about a rugby match was played at Portora Royal School, in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, in 1885. The school was short of numbers, because the headmaster had just decamped and taken half the pupils with him. But they still got a XV out, and in the three-quarter line, there was the daughter of the acting headmaster.
There his piece ended, but some research by one of our writers John Birch, who runs the Letchtworth Girls Blog, unearthed that the woman in question was a Miss E. F. Valentine, who together with her three brothers, set up the school team, in the face of some opposition. Miss Valentine went on to become Mrs Galway and emigrated to either South Africa or Canada.
For now it appears that the record of Miss Valentine playing rugby predates anything else documented on the subject. But, so far, the researchers have no idea of Miss Valentine’s first name, and no photograph which is where we need your help.
John Birch said: “It’s an amazing story because this is 1884 - Victorian Britain - not a time when well brought-up young girls would have normally been seen doing anything particularly energetic or sporting. If we think that prejudice against women is sport is bad now it is nothing compared to what it would have been like then. She was clearly a remarkable young woman - and her story probably deserves to be better known.”
Anyone with information on the subject, please get in touch on the details below. We are also interested in any other information on women or girls playing rugby from before the 1960s.
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