Women in Boots

Dr Marion Stell is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at The University of Queensland, as well as in the School of Humanities and Communication at the University of Southern Queensland in her hometown Toowoomba. She has over 30 years’ experience writing on history and sport and is the author of the popular books Half the Race: A History of Australian Women and Sport, a biography of world champion surfer Pam Burridge, and Girls in Sport: Soccer and Girls in Sport: Swimming. She has also written numerous academic articles and book chapters on sport and co-edited It’s How you Play the Game: International Perspectives on the Study of Sport. She was the foundation curator of the permanent exhibition Sportex at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, Australia. She was appointed to Football Federation Australia’s Panel of Historians in 2012–19. In 2019 she gave the keynote address at the 3rd International Football History Conference in Manchester City. She began playing soccer in 1979. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5999-188X Heather Reid AM was elected to the Board of Football Federation Australia in 2018 and held the position of Deputy Chair in 2019. She is the first woman CEO of a national Australian football organisation and was CEO of Capital Football for 12 years. She began playing soccer in Canberra in 1978 while working at the ANU and helped form the ACT Women’s Soccer Association in 1979. She is a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to football and women’s sport and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Canberra in 2017. She was inducted into Football Federation Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2007. In 1979 she travelled to Sydney to watch the first international soccer game for women between Australia and New Zealand at Seymour Shaw Park, an event that sparked her lifetime commitment to football.