The Big Interview: Jeannie Allott

Allott played for both England and the Netherlands across her illustrious career, yet her story isn't commonly known. England's youngest ever player, Allott recalls the trials and tribulations.

By the time she was eight years old, Jeannie Allott was, as I put to her, a “childhood superstar”. She laughs at the notion, but when you hear the stories, it’s back up the terminology.

Allott’s name was featured in Sports Illustrated’s ‘Faces in the Crowd’, and included in events that included superstars of the time such as George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton.

She is still to this day the youngest player to score for England, doing so in the team’s first ever game against Scotland in 1972, yet few know her story.

Part of this is despite being forever etched in the history of the sport as one of just 11 women to start England’s first ever official match, her career did not last that long, in England at least.

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Allott’s career took her to the Netherlands, and not just domestically. Between 1985 and 1987 she represented the country she moved to, playing and scoring against England, and she still lives and works across the sea to this day, which is perhaps why she has been so hard to find.

Born on the 17^th November, 1956, in Crewe, Allott was 16 years and a day old when she made her England debut - and scored - a record which has never been broken.

Now 66, she is “back and forth” from her home to Wembley for various shoots and media sessions to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the first match of the Lionesses.

“Every time I went to London I hitch-hiked. A milk float, a lorry, a car, I even slept on a station floor in London. My history is full – it’s completely full!”

To hear her stories of how difficult it was to simply play football as a woman brings home the stark reality that despite the unbanning of the women’s game in the early 1970s, the sport was a far cry away from where it is today, with England crowned European champions in front of a sell-out Wembley crowd, where Allott would step out with dozens of her fellow Lionesses when USA came to town in November, a chance to celebrate the pioneers of the sport, with Allott very much one of them.

“As far as I can go back, I just remember playing football at school,” says Allott, from her home in the Netherlands. “It was absolutely fantastic. I was in the school team and then I was called into the headmaster and he said ‘I’m sorry Jeannie, but you’ve been banned’.

“I was eight years old, I didn’t even know what the word banned meant. He explained it, and I was heartbroken of course. I’m not one of those girls who went on a netball court. Anyway, a day later I was back playing with the lads, I took no notice! It did break my heart though. Not just me, a lot of girls got banned from playing around that time.”