An adaptation of The Ladies Football Club has opened at the Crucible Theatre ahead of Women in Sport Week, telling a Sheffield story about women’s football in the First World War.

The play arrived on the Saturday before Women in Sport week, a national campaign celebrating women’s sport across the UK, giving audiences a reminder of Sheffield’s place in the development of the women’s game.

Written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Tim Firth, the production explores how women factory workers in Sheffield began playing football while men fought on the front line during World War I.

The play tells a fictional story inspired by the real experiences of women who formed football teams across Britain during the war. 

Elizabeth Newman, Sheffield Theatres artistic director, said: “The cast and creatives coming together for The Ladies Football Club bring extraordinary imagination, rigour and heart to a story that demands to be seen and heard now.

“It honours the courage and collective spirit at the root of the history of women’s football, while pushing boldly into the present. The Ladies Football Club does not simply celebrate an important moment in history, it reclaims it.” 

The play follows women working long shifts in Sheffield factories who began kicking a football around during lunch breaks. What started as a casual game developed into organised matches, with women’s teams later attracting crowds of more than 50,000.

Speaking about the production, playwright Stefano Massini, 50, described it as “a moment in time when a group of women, while their husbands were away fighting at the front, took the ball and made women’s football history”.

“It’s a story I loved telling, because it sums up eleven stories, those of each of the workers who made up that dream team.”

Tim Firth, 61, who adapted the play, said: “The story of the birth of women’s football is intrinsically linked to its disappearance.

“The excitement I felt on reading Stefano’s funny and lyrical verse drama was the challenge of creating a play that was a football match: told as much in movement as in words by eleven players who never leave the field, who support each other, fight each other and discover a passion for something forbidden.”

The production will continue its run at the Crucible until 28 March and tickets can be found on the Sheffield Theatres website.