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Dick, Kerr Ladies, formed by munitions workers at a Preston factory during the First World War, drew about 53,000 spectators to Goodison Park on Boxing Day 1920 against St Helens Ladies, with thousands more locked out. Less than a year later, on 5 December 1921, the Football Association declared the game 'quite unsuitable for females' and barred women's matches from its members' grounds. The ban stood until 1971.
The FA never made it illegal for women to play football; it barred them from its members' grounds and withheld the officials and structures that mass spectator sport depends on. Women kept playing, but controlling access to infrastructure let a governing body push a popular game to the margins while claiming it had only withdrawn its endorsement.
The official case against women's football rested on concern for women's bodies and propriety, alongside claims that charity match receipts were being mishandled. The timing points to a different motive: the ban came at the game's peak popularity, as its crowds rivalled the men's. Read the stated reasons for an exclusion against when it happens and whom the excluded group was starting to compete with.