“We had to do something drastic, we could not carry on.” Those are the stark words of former Women’s Football Association chair Patricia Gregory MBE as she recalls the financial troubles which hit the organisation so badly that The Football Association’s 1993 takeover of responsibility for the running of the National League was as essential as it became successful.

“We were £28,000 in debt and and we weren’t going to make any progress,” adds Gregory, “all we were doing was wracking up debt. We didn’t have the resources The FA had.

"We weren't pushing for them to take us over before that because we knew there wasn't the appetite there. They hadn't embraced the women’s game in the way that, say, the Germans had. But in 1993 we knew we couldn't do it any more.”

So, 24 years after the WFA’s founding and with just two seasons of operating the League, a clarion cry for help went out to The FA. Negotiations were set underway with a small working group including the then WFA chair Tim Stearn, Kent FA representative Barry Bright and, from the FA, Chief Executive Graham Kelly, Deputy Chief Executive Pat Day (nee Smith) OBE and Director of Finance Mark Day.

Pat Day recalls: “I wasn't very familiar with the league, but I knew people from the Women's Football Association. They were trying to run their own ship and it was very low profile, which was why we had detailed discussions concerning the benefits to the WFA of coming under the umbrella of The Football Association, rather than trying to achieve more on their own.

“It didn't make sense for them to try and replicate on a much smaller basis what The Football Association, through its members, could actually deliver to their members at that time.”

As the negotiations began there were still some dissenting voices within the WFA, whose chairman Richard Faulkener prior to Stearn (who had previously been chair from 1984-88) had resigned when a small group within the organisation blocked the circulation of a questionnaire seeking membership views on transferring the Association’s business to the FA.

Stearn says: “It was stirred up by various officers. But I’d been on The FA council for nine years representing them (the WFA members), and I knew the only way forward was for them to become part of The FA and with The FA to fund it.”

Mark Day remembers:  “I think there was certainly a nervousness within the WFA about losing whatever status they had at that time, and it being swallowed up by The FA and (the women’s game) becoming just a small part of what was the overall FA’s responsibility.

“In the discussions we had we spent a lot of time trying to reassure them that, if they came under the umbrella of The FA, that would be the way forward for women's football in this country. If they stayed outside The FA, then they didn't have the manpower or the finances to actually develop it themselves without The FA’s back-up.”

There were also issues on a wider scale, not just for the WFA but for The FA itself. Mark Day says: “There was quite a lot of pressure from UEFA and FIFA, who were already developing women’s tournaments at an international level. 

“The WFA simply couldn't have participated in that, and I think The FA was under considerable pressure from UEFA to actually invest more in the women's game.”

That investment followed the takeover of the WFA and, after the closing down of its Manchester offices, the transfer of information and records to the then FA headquarters in Lancaster Gate, London.

The transition of jurisdiction of the women’s game was completed in November 1993, though The FA’s first full season in charge was 1994/95. The competition was re-titled The FA Women’s Premier League and it’s top flight the National Division, with Northern and Southern Divisions below. “We'd done all the spadework and they bailed us out,” says Gregory.

Stearn, who had led the WFA’s 1991 formation of the National League, says: “There was only one thing that was going to happen – The FA were going to take over. If it hadn’t, then women’s football would have just soldiered on and nobody would have taken any notice of it. But The FA took it on and changed the whole image of the (women’s) game.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Patricia Gregory, Pat Day and Mark Day.