'Why have the FA got their knife into girls' football?'

Letter trying to stop ban found after 104 years

- ANDY LINES

AN extraordinary letter urging the Football Association not to ban women's football has been found after more than a century.

Described as the holy grail by the historian who discovered it, the letter had been missing since 1921.

Football bosses did not have the power to ban women from playing outright, so later that year they ruled that women's games were barred from FA-affiliated grounds. The ban was to last for 51 years.