By Katie Dodd
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| The first Scotland women’s team, 1901. |
The 13 April 2001 is the 120th anniversary of Scotland women’s very first international match, played against Ireland in Dublin.
I was first made aware of this special date during a conversation with Evlyn Raistrick, former Scottish and International Hockey Federation (FIH) Umpire, and co-author of the book 100 Years of Scottish Hockey, published in 2000. Evlyn and The Hockey Museum (THM) were keen to commemorate the beginnings of international women’s hockey in Scotland, but first a vital question needed answering: On which date in April did this match take place?
The centenary book had a report of the match played in Dublin, a team photo and information about their travel but, sadly, it was only recorded as being “played in April 1901”. Clearly some further investigation was needed to ascertain the exact date.
The first step was to look at our records of all international matches – this archive was compiled from years of research by Patrick Rowley and is now held by THM. The 1901 game is listed as the first match played by a Scottish women’s international team, but again it was only recorded as being played in April 1901 with no date.
The next port of call was to contact our colleagues at the Irish Hockey Archive – surely, they will have the date recorded. Peter Agnew and Steve Hiles responded swiftly, sending us images of the pages from their hand-written book of Irish international match reports. It records all of the Irish ladies’ matches in 1901 but, to our surprise, there was no match against Scotland amongst them! This match was turning out to be a bit of a mystery.
The search for the answer was now widened to ask more of THM’s volunteer researchers for help and before long we had our answer. Volunteer Archivist Marcus Wardle delved into the British Newspaper Archives and came up trumps with an article from the Dublin Evening Mail of 13 April 1901. The Mail reported the match being played earlier that day and recorded that the Irish team ran out as 2-0 victors.
THM’s extensive network within the sporting heritage world includes Jane Claydon who works with the archives of St Leonards School, St Andrews. St Leonards is a school with a great hockey tradition; it provided many of the early Scottish international players. Jane was able to confirm the match and date, courtesy of the school magazine from 1901.
By this time Peter Agnew had found more evidence from The Irish Times of 20 April 1901 (see extract below) and could report that the Irish team was at full strength that day.
With all this harmonious evidence from a variety of sources, Steve Hiles, a Hockey Ireland Director and Chair of their High Performance Committee, was happy to update the official records of Irish international matches to include the 13 April 1901 match. Scottish Hockey, THM and Hockey Ireland are all happy that the match took place and could be celebrated at the first Scottish women’s hockey international.
A full report of the match itself can be found on the Scottish Hockey website: click here.
Hockey International – Ireland v Scotland (Ladies)
Extract from The Irish Times of Saturday 20 April 1901.
“The weather was delightfully fine on Saturday when the first game between ladies representative of Scotland and Ireland was played at Milltown. In the first half of the game pressure was exerted for the most part by the home team and Miss Clarke scored a fine goal. It has been said that Scottish Ladies have not taken much interest in the game but anyone who witnessed the manner they defended their citadel against the perfect shower of shots poured in by the Irish have very good ground upon which to base a doubt of the accuracy of public rumour. Notwithstanding the warm attack made by the Irish Ladies the teams crossed over with Ireland leading by a single goal. In the second half the ‘North Country’ ladies played very strong and looked liked sweeping all before them; but the Irish Ladies seemingly thought it time to add to their score and Miss Parr for Ireland hit through despite a most stubborn resistance made by the Scottish defence. A series of hard knocks from Dame Fortune marked the career of the Scottish team in the remaining portion of the play and the final score read: Ireland … 2 goals; Scotland … Nothing.
“The Teams were :
“SCOTLAND – Misses Simpson, H Movi, M.Harvey, J Shaw, F Todd, W Littlejohn, Rutherford, D Robinson, Wedgewood, G Lindesay and T Stewart.
“IRELAND – Misses Cotter, Sealy, Atthill, Boyd, Hon. J Pritte, and Misses J Boyd, Fottrell, Parr, Obre, L Knox and Clarke.”
