Arsenal Women were formed in 1987 when they amalgamated Aylesbury Ladies and Aylesbury became Arsenal.

Few have a keener insight on that transition than Aylesbury-born Gill Sayell (now Gill Bordman), who was playing for her local team in 1987 when Vic Akers and Gill’s father Bob, who managed Aylesbury at the time, had a conversation about Arsenal absorbing the club.

A couple of decades before that conversation, which we will return to later, Gill’s love of playing football was fomenting as a young girl in the 1960s. “I was always a bit of a tomboy, hanging around with my four brothers,” she says. 

“We had a green out in front of where I used to live and everyone would get out and play and I joined in. I was the only girl playing. I was always quite sporty and I liked most sports, but football was my first love. If I could get outside with the ball then that’s what I would do.”

While Gill was connecting with her love of playing, organised women’s football was still banned in England in the 1960s – a ban that started in 1921 before being lifted in 1971. 

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