I lost my heart to the Belles : the story of the Doncaster Belles

What kind of women play football? Factory workers, bank clerks, policewomen, students and shop assistants, they come together on a Sunday united by a passion for the game all too woefully absent from the money-drenched circus of professional sport. Fired by a Collective clan, an infectious joie de vivre, over the past dozen years the Doncaster Belles have been successful beyond the dreams of any other women's team. Pete Davies spends a season with the Belles - and finds a unique group of people with an abundance of talent, and a vividly earthy sense of humour. They play hard in the pit villages and nightclubs of South Yorkshire, they play hard on tatty pitches in run-down suburbs and industrial estates - but they play for love too, and to a standard that could convert the most blinkered chauvinist. At a time when more and more women are both watching and playing football, this club have been trailblazers; in this rich, diverting and passionate book, Davies make it plain why you too, once you've met them, will lose your heart to the Belles. The story of a Yorkshire women's football team. The author spent a season with the Doncaster Belles, and found a unique group of people with an abundance of talent and humour, equally at home in the nightclubs of South Yorkshire as they are playing on tatty pitches in run-down estates. The author spent last season with the legendary women's football club, the Doncaster Belles, and he has now written a jubilant book about female friendship. Davies gives moving, sometimes hilarious insights into the unseen lives of this group of women Pete Davies. Originally Published: London : Heinemann, 1996.