‘I’d have played in goal if they’d wanted - it’s such an honour to represent your country’
HULL’S MOST CAPPED ATHLETE: Carol Thomas
Chewing the Fat - Out to lunch with Phil Ascough
This week’s guest: Former England Captain Carol Thomas BEM
I’ll put it down as the first own goal of the World Cup. Lunch with a legend as we talk football for two hours and count down to one of the game’s great occasions.
Me: “So let’s talk about the World Cup then, and what do you make of England’s chances?”
Carol Thomas: “Well it won’t be easy because it’s on the other side of the world and I’m sure the opposition will give it everything to try and beat the current European champions…”.
Me: “No, no. Not that World Cup. Not the Lionesses. This World Cup. The… erm… Lions?”
Carol: “Oh, that? Well I’m sure I’ll watch it if it’s on but I haven’t really been passionate about the men’s World Cup since probably 1990.”
MILESTONE: Carol Thomas winning her 50th cap against Scotland in 1985
Carol does have a vested interest. She’s Hull’s most-capped athlete – probably in any sport – with her 56 appearances for England Women and is sharing her experience and expertise as the official ambassador of Hull City Ladies.
Her roll of honour as captain is bookended by two international tournament victories, the 1976 Home International Championship and the Mundialito (Little World Cup) held in Italy in 1985. In between, in 1984, there was the first women’s European Championships with defeat against Sweden in a two-legged final on penalties – a few years before the men made shoot-out heartache fashionable!
Carol was the first woman to reach the 50-cap milestone, as reflected in her Twitter account @First_2_Fifty which is dedicated to women’s football in the days before the Women’s Super League (WSL). She is listed in the National Football Museum Hall of Fame and has a profile on Wikipedia.
LEGENDS: With Hope Powell before the Euro 2022 Final
“I worked in the offices at Northern Dairies,” she recalled as she outlined the hobbyist approach of officialdom to the women’s game in the 1970s.
“They were very good and let me have time off for my England games. Quite a lot of the other players had to use their holidays or lose pay and sometimes they couldn’t make it to a match because they couldn’t afford it.”
There’s a certain charm in the listing by the museum of such a decorated international’s “principal clubs” as British Oil and Cake Mills (BOCM), Reckitts Ladies and Hull Brewery Ladies. Apparently Northern Dairies didn’t have a women’s football team so Carol played netball for them.
The works leagues were the lifeblood of football for men and particularly for women, with their sport officially banned from 1921 until 1971 after the FA ruled “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”.
‘I MIGHT WATCH THE MEN’S WORLD CUP IF IT’S ON’: Ladies first for Carol Thomas
Carol’s passion for the game came from her older brother Michael and their Dad, Percy George McCune, who was known as Mac and played for Air Street United.
“I started playing pretty much as soon as I could kick a ball,” said Carol.
“I just kicked a ball around with them and the first big thing I remember was the 1966 World Cup.”
It was about then that Carol’s family relocated from Longhill to Chanterlands Avenue. It was closer to Mac’s work at Stelrad and it was a pivotal move for Carol who subsequently met Flo Bilton, the revered campaigner, coach and administrator born in the year that the ban was introduced.
Carol said: “A lady who lived down the street from us played for BOCM and I met Flo through her. She had seen me playing with the lads and asked me to join them. I got in the team when I was about 11 and the others were in their late teens and early 20s.
“At that time, because of the ban, they were probably looking for players to make up the numbers but I like to think I was decent and had a bit of skill. Hull at that time was forward thinking with women’s football. Maybe they saw I could develop into something.”
Carol’s pace and prowess as a winger prompted Flo to sign her for Reckitts and then introduce her to the England set-up, where her career bloomed under manager Tommy Tranter and his successor Mark Reagan.
SKIPPER: Leading England Women against Italy in 1982
She said: “I went for the first ever women’s coaching course at Lilleshall and was lucky enough to pass as one of three women’s preliminary badge coaches. Tommy was running the course and asked me to go for trials for England.”
Still a winger, Carol made her class count. She got through the trials and suddenly a personal fixture list featuring Yorkshire Electricity Board and Centre Bar was enhanced by a home game against France. The venue was Plough Lane, home of Wimbledon, then a non-league club which, like women’s football, was on the way up.
She recalled: “We trained at Crystal Palace and it was the first time I had been to London. It was very daunting. I came on as a second-half sub but at right back! It was the first time I’d played that position and I stayed there for the rest of my career but they could have put me in goal if they’d wanted. It was such an honour to play for your country and I was only 19.
AMBASSADOR: Signing posters for fans at Hull City Ladies
“With England if I was travelling to a game in this country and there were two or three of us in the same area we would go by car and pay our own fuel to get there. If we were going to London it would probably be by train and we got a percentage of the fare back.
“When the Women’s Football Association started they were struggling for sponsorship and they couldn’t afford to reimburse us fully. You noticed the difference when you went to Sweden or Italy. There would be a fabulous coach waiting for us at the airport and we would have that for the weekend.”
Travel was a problem when Carol spent a season across the Pennines with Preston in pursuit of a higher standard of football. Coming back to Yorkshire with CP Doncaster and then Rowntrees in York brought a step up but with an unexpected opportunity – no-holds-barred training with a Hull City Juniors squad which included striker Andy Flounders, who went on to make more than 500 appearances in his career, and goalkeeper Rob Palmer, who has surely racked up even more matches from behind a microphone.
Retirement came in 1985, again in 2003 and finally in 2009. Husband Alan laughingly says she’s had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra.
TWO OF THE GREATEST LIONESSES: Faye White MBE, left, England Women’s longest-serving captain, with Carol Thomas BEM, the most successful captain
Carol said: “I was playing at Brandesburton then and finally hung up my boots at the age of 54. By then I was playing in midfield. Even in my mid-40s people commented that I could still read the game and I did more running than most of the youngsters.”
There was a job as a postie in Carol’s home village of Aldbrough, where the round will have been that little bit smaller every year. Following retirement it’s now all about supporting women’s football from the touchline.
Carol said: “I help Hull City Ladies by doing interviews for them, meeting and greeting with the young mascots who come to the home games, and basically promoting women’s football as well as the club.
“In my three years I’ve seen them move on in leaps and bounds. We have good backroom staff, a good manager and a good chief executive. They are doing as much as they can to promote Hull City Ladies and improve the club and they are going in the right direction.”
PIONEER: Carol Thomas after the UEFA final defeat in 1984
Victory for the Lionesses put Carol in the media spotlight in a way she didn’t even experience as England captain, which shows how the game has progressed.
She said: “I got some of my memorabilia out for a crew making a film about the Lionesses. It’s coming out at Christmas and they wanted some of the players from my era. I’ve got shirts and caps and the shield they gave me at the end of my England career with all the matches on it.”
Carol is open to invitations from media, sponsors or whoever to go to Australia and New Zealand next summer for the only World Cup that really matters to her, and she has plenty to say about the future of the game.
Maybe the FA will give her a call about their current review into the future of the women’s game, an initiative chaired by former England international Karen Carney with a brief which includes looking at potential and resources.
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Carol said: “As much as I am promoting women’s and girls’ football it was great at the Euros to see how many dads and lads were there.
“When we got to the Euro final in 1984 women’s football got a big lift with more media interest. Now it’s getting even more, the WSL is live on TV and with the Lionesses winning it will stay on the up.
“The biggest test will come next year with the World Cup but with Sarina Wiegman as head coach I don’t see any reason why they can’t do well there. I also don’t see why Sarina shouldn’t have a chance of a job with a club in the men’s Premier League but something like that won’t happen for a while yet. Let’s see how she gets on next summer.”
Meanwhile, the curtain-raiser will keep us occupied until nearly Christmas, with the betting odds for England’s men of around 8/1 probably more of a statement about the bookies’ reluctance to expose themselves than a serious guide to the team’s prospects.
MEMORABILIA: Carol Thomas with the shirt presented to her after the Lionesses Euro 2022 win, and other awards
It promises to be a tough tournament for players and fans – and for the licensed trade as they try to emerge as World Cup winners at a time of year when most people have other spending priorities.
Expect plenty of ingenuity and innovation and probably bargains by the bucket load from venues which will struggle to match the demand of a summer tournament.
We lunched at The Lodge Bar & Restaurant, which overlooks the 18th green at Sutton Park golf club and is open to all. We chose it partly because, sadly, there is a dearth of local, independent dining options in the east of the city but also because I’d heard the food was impressive.
The Lodge is certainly geared up for a good World Cup with its indoor big screens regularly in use for live Premier League games, and a tepee on the patio offering a party option, presumably watertight to prevent the beer showers from soaking passing golfers.
‘ONLY ONE OF US WAS GOING TO PLAY FOR ENGLAND’: Carol Thomas with husband Alan
With apologies for breaking the golden rule of each eating something different to give readers a good idea of the fare, I have to confess all three of us had the steak pie. And we all had chips because there were no new potatoes. And it was all outstanding.
I’ll take the yellow card for that infringement but can offer, in mitigation, reports from the kitchen where my contact says the Sunday roasts are superb, the curry is all cooked from scratch and the fish is even better than they used to serve at their wonderful city centre restaurant. We didn’t try dessert because we were all pied out.
Carol left a fair bit of hers, which is no surprise because full backs are notoriously bad finishers. While she tackled it I took the opportunity to have more of a chat with Alan, her supportive husband since 1979, good with detail as a former IT manager at Hull City Council and keeping our conversation on track with facts and stats from Carol’s memorable career.
Alan revealed he also played a bit, but he quickly put paid to any suggestions of frustration at his wife’s success.
He said: “I used to play Sunday league football but it was obvious only one of us was going to play for England and it wouldn’t be me.”