As the Lionesses prepare for a sixth successive tournament quarter-final, based in plush Zurich surroundings, Janet Bagguley remembers how it all began for the team.
It was a very different era.
She was a pioneer, lining up in 1972 when England finally played a women’s international – 100 years after the men’s team launched.
Now Lioness No 4 feels generations apart – and worlds apart – from the teenager who had to fund her own journey on international duty after a five-decade ban on women’s football was finally lifted in England.
“We didn’t have any help at all,” Bagguley told Sky News. “I’m sure our first game we wore a men’s football kit and the England badge was just stuck on, and then it would have been taken off after we returned it.
“We had no kit of our own, we bought our own football boots, everything we paid for ourselves or our parents did.”
And, already working at 16, with no holidays left, it relied on her boss clocking her in and out of work for three days.
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So, on 18 November 1972, Bagguley could line up against Scotland on a frozen pitch, organised not directly by the Football Association but a Women’s FA.
“All the men’s matches that day had been called off because of the conditions, but we still played,” she said.
“I can remember walking out onto that pitch, feeling really, really proud, especially when they played the national anthem.”
England won 3-2. But it would take another two decades before the FA became fully on board with the women’s team.
Now the Lionesses are household names, with the FA’s investment developing a fully professional league and turning the national team into a force.
That peaked with the European Championship title won at Wembley in 2022 and reached the World Cup final a year later.
Semi-finals have been reached at every World Cup or Euros since 2015, and it’s the target when Sarina Wiegman’s side plays Sweden on Thursday in Zurich at Euro 2025.
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Bagguley said: “Where it is today now, the facilities that they’ve all got, it’s amazing.
“And the current Lionesses are leaving a legacy now for all the younger ones coming through from the grassroots. It’s superb.
“Obviously things have come on in leaps and bounds haven’t they?”
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Bagguley is now a Royal Mail postwoman but has gained from the current generation’s surging status.
She has the type of sponsorship deal unimaginable in 1972, through KIND Snacks, collecting letters of support to deliver to the players.
“They’re professionals now,” she said. “It was really hard work. We had snarky remarks thrown at us about you should be at home doing your cooking and cleaning and things like that.”
But now?
“It’s fantastic,” she said. “You hear the kids all shouting, I’ll be Toone, I’m going to be Bronze, Williamson. They’re all such household names now.”
