WAS your grandma a sporty hot-shot? Or your Auntie Maggie the female wizard of dribble?

If so, then a couple of local councillors would like to hear from you. Andy Bowden, deputy chairman of St Helens Council's Leisure committee, and colleague Pat Robinson, a keen local historian, are seeking details about the history of women's soccer locally.

Interest has been fanned by a couple of flashback photos, brought to light by Vivienne Hainsworth, local history and archive librarian, featuring ladies teams of the first world war munitions works in Lancots Lane, Sutton (1914-18).

Pat says: "They were still playing after the war and were due to go to France, but for some reason never they made it."

And she enclosed a 1917 local newspaper item seeking lady footballers. Whether the tone of this succeeded in enticing recruits is open to debate. It read: 'Can a ladies team be organised in St Helens? Of course it can! Think of the splendid, hefty specimens of womanhood developed in local munitions works during the past two years...'

Just the sort of phraseology bound to appeal to feminine vanities - I don't think!

Andy Bowden invites any info on the subject and wonders if anyone would like to research this as a project by checking newspapers of the period in the local history section of the Central Library.

Councillors Bowden and Robinson can be contacted via St Helens Town Hall, tel. 456109.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.