IF you think a gang of ladies kicking the merry hell out of a ball of pigskin was a relatively new phenomenon, think again.

As this cracking photo poignantly proves, females were trying their hand at the ‘beautiful game’ in Bailey Park as far back as 1920.

Lined up in front of the Victoria Cottage Hospital this fearsome bunch were probably two teams of off-duty nurses looking to relive the tension with a good old-fashioned kick about.

The photograph is from nearly 100 years ago. 1920 to be precise. A mere two years after millions of women over 30 in the UK had been given the right to vote.

Of course, 1920 was a turning point for a generation who had seen so much young life lost in the trenches of Flanders and similar sites of blood and butchery.

Two years after the hellish hopelessness of the First World War, Britain was finally entering a period of peace of prosperity and many decided the time was right to finally throw their hair down and party.

The ‘Roaring Twenties,’ as it came to be known, was a time of ‘Bright Young Things’ and ‘Flappers,’ who with a new-found employment and sense of empowerment were busy wearing their hair and dresses shorter, and making time for the occasional cigarette, cocktail, and turn on the dance floor to have a crack at the frantic and hugely-popular Charleston.

Yet this golden age didn’t last long. By the mid-1920s Winston Churchill had reintroduced the Gold Standard and priced your average Joe and Jolene out of the good life.

It was a mere taste of the woe to come. Recession and unemployment hit and would lead to the Great Depression of the 1930s and ultimately the misery and woe of the Second World War.

The boom had become a bust. Sound familiar?

As F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose fortunes and career would become synonymous with the 1920s once wrote in The Great Gatsby, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Let’s just hope that these ladies featured in the fading photograph had a good game at the dawn of a decade, which, not unlike Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United, promised so much but delivered so little.

If you’ve got a blast from the past or something sage from a forgotten age then get in touch with Sports Editor Tim Butters on 01873 852187 or [email protected].