Former England and Liverpool goalkeeper David James has painted ‘lost Lioness’ Gill Sayell for the BBC’s Extraordinary Portraits series. Here is her story.
“I had to pretend to be a boy.”
Gill Sayell remembers her first football match clearly. She was in primary school and there was no local girls’ team, so she cut her hair short, called herself Billy and played for the boys.
It was the 1960s and the Football Association (FA) had banned the women’s game from being played at professional grounds and pitches of clubs affiliated to the association – a ban imposed in 1921 that lasted for almost half a century.
Undeterred, Sayell continued to play on park pitches with her four brothers. “Football is my first love, and I’ve always wanted to play,” she said.
A few years later, she would be scouted at a charity football match to represent an ‘England’ squad at Copa 71 – an unofficial women’s World Cup tournament being held in Mexico.
She was 14 years old and had never flown before.
When her plane landed it was surrounded by paparazzi. She said it was like something out of her “wildest dreams”.
“There were so many people there,” Sayell said. “We didn’t really know what was going on.”
However, on her return home there was no paparazzi. Instead, she was banned for three months and the team’s manager, Harry Batt, was banned for life.
Despite this, Sayell went on to become a founder member of the Arsenal women’s team and continues to support women’s football today.
“It’s so great to see all the young girls with their football kits on now, because I was the only little girl that had a football kit where I was from,” Sayell said.
Now the footballer is being honoured with a portrait by ex-England goalkeeper David James as part of the BBC series Extraordinary Portraits, in which artists depict people with powerful personal stories.
“To be chosen to be part of it, like with Mexico, it’s a surreal moment,” Sayell said, beaming.
While many know James for his 572 Premier League appearances and playing for England, Liverpool and West Ham, to name a few, he has also been painting for two decades.
His previous work includes a portrayal of England’s World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore accepting the trophy from Queen Elizabeth II.
James called Sayell a “trailblazer” and a “pioneer” of women’s football.
He hopes people will see the portrait and learn about Sayell’s story, explaining he respected “all the sacrifices that she had to go through in an era where women’s football was not looked after”.
‘Cauldron of heat and noise’
Sayell, who stood at just 4ft 10in, recalled her tummy turning as she stepped into the Azteca Stadium to compete in Copa 71.
When it was first built, the stadium had a capacity to hold more than 100,000 people, which was bigger than Wembley, with Sayell calling it a “cauldron of heat and noise”.
While the team did not make it out of the group stages in the tournament, she recalls the players being “treated really well” and being “respected” as footballers.
“You think, ‘well, women’s football is going to start now – it’s going to take off big time when we get home’,” she explained.
However, Sayell did not receive the welcome home she was expecting.
“We thought we’d done something wrong, because we got banned,” Sayell said, explaining how she and her fellow players did not talk about their experience, adding that at the time she felt “a little bit embarrassed”.
James believes a lot of what Sayell and her cohort did was “neglected”, explaining: “The system did not help Gill and the young girls who went out.”
They were banned by the Women’s Football Association (WFA).
The WFA had helped to persuade the FA to overturn its 1921 ban on the women’s game and was in the process of holding nationwide trials for an official England team.
Patricia Gregory, former WFA secretary, told the BBC’s Ian Youngs: “We had a fledgling organisation. We were trying to do the best we could for everybody. And that relied on being fair to everybody.”
Despite the ban, Sayell said the experience strengthened her resolve and she continued playing after it was lifted.
At Arsenal she played in men’s hand-me-down kits, and she was the team’s first female player of the year for the 1987-1988 season.
“It was progression, but I think it could have happened a lot earlier than it did,” Sayell said.
She is “so pleased that it is happening now for the girls and the women of today”.
In 2022, England won the Women’s Euros, beating Germany at a packed Wembley Stadium, with the crowd including some of the Copa 71 squad.
James said: “All that suffering and work put in decades ago got us to that point where we could all celebrate women’s football.
“We didn’t have female idols to look up to. It was all male. So now the girls have got that, they can see that there is a path for them.”
James wanted to do a “faithful representation of an amazing woman” with his painting and decided to not only paint her portrait but add in reference points from her career.
“You drive past a football pitch, pretty much at any time – there’ll be girls playing on there. And I think that is a celebration of where Gill and her cohorts have taken the women’s game,” James said.
The artist spent time with Sayell before painting her portrait, learning about her story and including nods to her professional career in his artwork, like the poster from Copa 71 and a golden boot trophy.
However, James said he changed the painting “so many times” and was conscious of what Sayell and her family would think.
“As a footballer, I could go on a football field, I could do my thing and answer to myself whether I did well or badly,” he said.
James explained if people did not recognise Sayell’s story through her painting “I haven’t done what I was supposed to be doing as an artist.”
However, Sayell said she was “blown away” by the artwork, appreciating the nods to her career milestones, adding: “It just captures my journey.
“Throughout my journey in football, I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. Even if you’ve got knocked a little bit you just get up – well, I’m still doing this because I love doing it.”
You can watch Extraordinary Portraits on BBC iPlayer now
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