Portrait of World Cup's Lost Lioness

'It's shocking that in our lifetime women were marginalised'

- By James Rampton

GILL SAYELL recalls the moment she arrived at the first-ever women's football World Cup like it was yesterday. At the age of just 14, she was selected for the unofficial England team at Copa '71 in Mexico.

Gill, who often had to pretend to be a boy called Billy to get a game, had never been abroad before and did not even have a passport. She had no idea about the magnitude of the event. But all that changed the moment they touched down in Mexico.

The 68-year-old, whose story features in a moving episode of BBC One's Extraordinary Portraits with Bill Bailey on Friday, remembers: "I never even dreamt I'd get on an aircraft.

"The plane doors opened, and then all the flashlights and TV cameras started. I couldn't take in what was happening. I thought, 'Crikey, what's going on?"" The English players were feted by vast crowds wherever they went. The 90,000 people who saw them play Mexico at the Azteca Stadium is still a record attendance for an England women's match.

Gill recollects the crowd was so loud that "we couldn't hear each other talk. It was surreal that it was happening to a young schoolgirl who was playing on park pitches just three weeks earlier".

Upon their return home, however, everything immediately turned sour.