[3] The first meeting of the ELFA was held several weeks after the ban and Leonard Bridgett, the manager and coach of Stoke Ladies, was its first president.
[2][4] Bridgett helped to organise the first and only English Ladies Football Association Challenge Cup competition in the spring of 1922.
[5] The ELFA folded in over a year, and women continued to play in local parks and even dog-tracks, with no money or infrastructural support from the Football Association, no resources, coaches or pitches.
However, when the war was over, the factories started closing and women who had been liberated during wartime was forced to return to their "right and proper place" in society.
No longer seen as being moral and appropriate, football was now considered to be unladylike and dangerous for women's health by so-called medical experts and physicians.
The meeting resulted in the establishment of the English Ladies Football Association (ELFA), with a league of 57 teams of amateur players.
After a long discussion, some changes in the rules were accepted to accommodate women players, including: On 7 January 1922, a meeting between the ELFA's officers took place in Manchester, where they approved the ball to be used and maximum and minimum pitch sizes.
An ELFA's deputation met representatives of the Northern Union (Rugby), and their ground ban was removed for ELFA-affiliated clubs.
In the 1970s, there was an international recommendation for all football authorities to include the women's game and the Sex Discrimination Act, which contained a clause exempting sports, was passed in 1975.