The First Woman To Captain Manchester United At Wembley

Manchester United Women, a club founded in 2018, prepare to play their first FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium this Sunday, but it is not the first time a women’s team representing the club have played there. Now living in Australia but still playing the game, Donna Douglas, captained that side in the 1990s.

Then called Manchester United Ladies, the team were twice invited to play at Wembley ahead of men’s matches at the old stadium. In the last of these games, they defeated Newcastle United Ladies ahead of a Charity Shield meeting between the two men’s teams, a match notable for the debut of Alan Shearer, the most-expensive player in the world at the time.

The ‘Ladies’ teams played two halves of 30 minutes ahead of the men’s match, which was watched by an attendance of 73,214. No women’s club match has ever been played in front of so many people but this Sunday, the modern Manchester United team return to play FA Cup holders, Chelsea, before the first-ever sell-out crowd the women’s club game has generated at Wembley Stadium.

Douglas, a Manchester United supporter “through and through” had previously played for the neighboring Stockport County Ladies before the invitation came for the team to amalgamate with Manchester United Ladies. Douglas made the move with the team continuing to train in Stockport. In 1993, she gave birth to her son and juggled her playing time around motherhood and working full-time as a courier.

Two years before the match in 1996, Douglas and her team played Oldham Athletic Ladies, a team run by Dave Ryan, at Wembley ahead of the men’s FA Cup semi-final between the same two teams. Ryan was also manager of the Manchester United Community program and helped organize the match.

When The Football Association made a similar proposal ahead of the 1996 FA Charity Shield, Douglas and her Manchester United players were once more invited to play at the home of English soccer. The match occurred just eleven days after England men’s forward Shearer turned down a move to Manchester United instead joining Newcastle United for a then world-record transfer fee of £15 million ($18.9 million).

The Manchester United Ladies players were permitted to play in the club’s new official Umbro strip – which they had to return – with numbers on their back, but not their names like the male players. Number 4 Douglas, captained the Manchester United side to a 2-0 victory, thanks to goals from Simone Dwyer and Dawn Hollands, for which the squad received commemorative medals and a trophy from the sponsors, Littlewoods.

Douglas was unable to invite her family and friends to Wembley to watch the game but remembers “we were given a changing room – it wasn’t the official one – and there was a nice buffet, which was put out for us.” After the game, the players of both teams were given tickets to watch the men’s match but unfortunately for Douglas, they were at the wrong end of the ground, “the tickets we were allocated was with Newcastle United Ladies, we were in the opposition supporters end!”

During her career, Douglas also played matches at Stamford Bridge, Villa Park and in one of the last-ever games at Maine Road, the former home of Manchester City, a game played to raise funds and awareness for breast cancer. Douglas later started coaching at Manchester United, working with the under-14 girls.

In 2001, Manchester United took their Ladies team officially under their umbrella, who were then permitted to play matches at their official facilities at The Cliff which gave them access to an indoor and outdoor pitch. “We used to train there Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Douglas told me, “and if we had a big game on Saturday, we would go there and walk through some set-pieces on a Friday night.” Yet, four years later, shortly after the takeover of the club by Malcolm Glazer, the women’s team were disbanded as the club felt the senior team to be ‘unprofitable’.

Despite maintaining a successful girls academy which produced many leading players, those graduates, like current captain Katie Zelem, had to move elsewhere to pursue a professional career. It was not until 2018 that the club announced plans to reintroduce a senior women’s team, entering the pyramid in the second tier and immediately winning promotion to the Women’s Super League. After three consecutive fourth-place finishes, the team currently sit top of the division and could complete the league and Cup double if they can overcome Chelsea in both competitions.

Now in her fifties, Douglas made the choice to emigrate to Perth, Australia in 2007. Despite working night shifts, she still plays for Gosnells City FC in the state of Western Australia. She lives close to a former Manchester United team-mate and together they will be attending many of the matches at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the country this summer, including the semi-finals and final. Looking back, she told me, “I probably wish I was 30 years younger and playing now, especially at that level”

The Manchester United Ladies players who defeaged Newcastle United 2-0 at Wembley Stadium on August 11, 1996 were Michelle Jibson, Victoria Farah, Jill Anson, Deborah Phillips, Simone Dwyer, Kerry Owens, Kaye Cheetham, Sally Finnemore, Josie Dunning, Alison Newton, Pamela Wilby, Emma Wilkinson, Barbara Williams, Donna Douglas (captain), Dawn Hollands and Trish Parker.