Chelsea, who have benefited from more investment from their enlightened men’s team than most, won just £25,000 for lifting the trophy, compared with £1.8million for men’s winners Leicester. The 2021 final brought back into view the scandalous disparity in prize money. The quality is excellent, and improving all the time. Dinosaurs who criticise the quality or relevance women’s football – a former editor of mine included – are either wilfully ignorant of its history or wilfully disingenuous in patronising praise about everything “except the goalkeepers are rubbish”. Even when the ban was lifted, the FA didn’t take supreme charge of the game until 1993, starving it yet more of funding and basic resources.

The ban lasted for nearly 50 years and set the sport back far longer in terms of coaching, visibility and money. Many believe the FA saw women’s football as an active threat to the men’s game – 53,000 came through the Goodison Park turnstile on Boxing Day 1920 to watch the pre-eminent Dick, Kerrs Ladies in a friendly – and sought to re-establish some authority. “The frame of a woman is more rounded than a man’s, her movements should be more rounded and less angular.” “Kicking is too jerky a movement for women,” it said.

Think that’s a joke? Further investigation of the medical ‘experts’ the FA consulted at the time includes further detail.

The gender gap game instructions