After games at Barcelona’s Camp Nou and Milan’s San Siro earlier this season, Manchester United’s legendary 74,140-capacity Old Trafford will this Saturday become the third-largest stadium in Europe to host a women’s club match almost exactly 100 years after it first staged a women’s game.

Following much-vaunted Women’s Super League matches at Stamford Bridge, the Etihad Stadium and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last season, Manchester United will become the latest leading English club to put on a regular season game at their club’s main ground when they take on West Ham United at Old Trafford this weekend. Unfortunately, no spectators will be admitted due to ongoing Covid-restrictions, but 100 years ago, in a forgotten piece of soccer history, the stadium was packed for a women’s match.

On 8 January 1921, the Preston-based works team, , Dick, Kerr Ladies played Bath Ladies in front of at least 25,000 supporters. A fortnight earlier, the all-conquering Dick, Kerr side had played before a staggering 53,000 fans at Goodison Park in Liverpool, a world-record for a women’s club match that stood for 99 years. In her seminal book on the team. In A League Of Their Own, author Gail Newsham discovered that extra trains, trams and buses were laid on especially for the occasion.

Bath were believed to be one of the best teams in the south but proved no match for the Northerners who won 12-0. Newspaper reports of the time declared that Dick, Kerr Ladies were “superior in every aspect”. Gate receipts from the match raised almost £2,000 in aid of Manchester’s Unemployed Ex-Servicemen.

The game was one of the first in which the 15-year-old prodigy Lily Parr played as a left-sided forward after previously starting at left-back upon signing for the team from St. Helens the previous year. She scored four times at Old Trafford that day, twice in each half, and went on to star in the team for the next 30 years, reputedly scoring over 900 goals. So great was her legacy, that 24 years after her death in 1978 she became the first woman inducted into the inaugural English Football Hall of Fame at the National Football Museum in Manchester. In 2019, the museum commissioned a life-size bronze sculpture of Parr, the country’s first statue depicting a female player.

Eleven months after that Old Trafford match, the English Football Association put an end to women soccer’s natural development by prohibiting any of their club sides from hosting a women’s match in a Football League stadium. A Harley Street physician of the time, Dr. Mary Scharlieb, stated, “I found it a most unsuitable game – too much for a woman’s physical frame”. The ban lasted until 1971, setting the women’s game back decades.

In September 1990, Old Trafford hosted the England women’s national team in a European Championship qualifier against Norway, a match notable for the debut of current Lionesses’ head coach, Hege Riise in the opposition side. That game only attracted 465 spectators but 22 years later over 25,000 fans attended two Olympic soccer matches played at the ground and Old Trafford has been selected as the venue of the Opening Match of next summer’s UEFA Women’s Euro finals to be staged in England.

Unfortunately, like all of Manchester United’s home games this season, there will be no fans in attendance on Saturday. Their captain Katie Zelem empathized with their supporters, “I know it’s hard for the fans who want to be there supporting us. We want them to know that we know they’re still there and behind us every step of the way. We’re so grateful they have continued to support us in these difficult times”.

For all of Manchester United’s team, playing at Old Trafford will be a completely new experience. Zelem admits “it’s almost a dream come true for some people. We know it’s an amazing pitch. We went to have a look at it today. The main thing is the game, no matter what, the three points are hugely important. We need to grasp it with both hands. It’s not daunting”.

The one Manchester United player with experience of playing on the Old Trafford pitch will sadly miss the game. Tobin Heath is still recovering from an ankle injury she sustained in January but speaking to me last September she recalled “nerding out” when she went out onto pitch upon signing for the club. “It’s funny because I was actually at Old Trafford yesterday, and it was bringing back a lot of memories. It’s just such an iconic venue for any footballer. I had all the feels when going back there”.

Heath played twice at the ground during the London 2012 Olympics, a 1-0 win over North Korea and an epic 4-3 overtime semi-final victory over Canada, the last women’s soccer match to be played on the pitch. “Any footballer’s dream would be to play for Manchester United and to play at Old Trafford” she revealed to me. “The pitch just has this iconic feeling about it. It’s elevated like it’s almost a stage for the players, and I always enjoyed that you can kind of just slip right off the edges. Seeing the little nuances of it, you know, it’s just special to be there”.

For the team, the game will be more than a showpiece occasion. Top of the league for much of the season, three defeats in four matches have left Manchester United clinging on to third place. With Arsenal in hot pursuit of them for the last Champions League qualifying spot, nothing less than victory against West Ham will suffice for Manchester United something that manager Casey Stoney has underlined to her squad. “I told them I didn’t care we’re playing at Old Trafford. I care about how we’re going to perform, execute the game-plan and how we’re going to be better. That’s maybe a bit brutal but we cannot play the occasion. We have to make sure we’re on it”.

‎Stoney also voiced her frustration that the game will not be shown on television with the BBC already committed to broadcasting Saturday evening’s match between Manchester City and Reading and the club’s in-house channel, MUTV, currently limited to showing only three games per season. “The real shame is that we’re not allowed to broadcast it” believes Stoney. “I think we’ve missed a massive opportunity. We are so short-sighted in the women’s game. We’ve used our three picks for MUTV so can’t broadcast it. I’m really disappointed nobody has picked it up”.