Details
Full name: Rose Reilly
Ref: A legendary, ground-breaking footballer in the female game
aka: Rose Peralta
Born: 2 January 1955
Birthplace: Kilmarnock, Scotland
Occupation: Footballer
Summary
[…TBC….]
In 2023, Celtic announced Scottish footballing legend Rose Reilly as the new Ambassador of Celtic FC Women. A very deserved honour.
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- ACSOM interview (2024)
Articles
Articles
Icons of Football: Rose Reilly – Scotland’s only World Cup winner
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65849250
Last updated on
29 June 202329 June 2023.From the section Scottish
Rose Reilly
Icon, legend, trailblazer, role model. Such superlatives are thrown around a lot in football but their meaning has perhaps never been more true than when attributed to Rose Reilly.
A serial winner throughout her career, Rose won eight Serie A titles, a French title and four Italian Cups. Oh, and a World Cup in 1984. She was also voted the best women’s player in the world in the same year.
As the only Scot to win football’s greatest prize in the famous blue strip… of Italy, her story has slowly become more well known and a new BBC Scotland programme is charting her incredible life story alongside five other icons of the game.
Here’s a pick of some great stories about Rose, her life and her impact with plenty more to come in the show.
‘Bellissimo’
“Rose was a very powerful player, physically strong, with a great tactical sense,” said former Italy striker Elisabetta Vignotto. “Very talented.
“I met her for the first time in 1975, in Padua. She was playing for Milan and I remember her well because she scored a wonderful goal against us.
“When she arrived, she immediately stood out for how quick she was and for her powerful shot on the run. She scored an 80-yard goal. She threw a bomb. Bellissimo!”
‘Everybody in the world should know her story’
“I think everybody in the world should know her story,” says current Scotland forward Lana Clelland, who has spent the past nine years playing in Italy.
“I first found out about Rose in Italy, I didn’t know about her before then. I honestly couldn’t believe that I, as a Scottish international player, didn’t know who she was and what she’d achieved.
“I was honestly gobsmacked one of the first times I met her. She’s a ball of joy – always has a smile on her face and always has a nice word. She came down to a national team training session and, obviously, she has her Ayrshire accent, which I’m very fond of, and then so quickly she’d switch and speak Italian with me.
“Sometimes I know I can’t find the right English word and I’ll get it in Italian quicker so it was just funny to hear someone else doing that as well.”
‘She stands on her own’
Like Reilly, Hearts technical director and former Scotland forward Steven Naismith is from Ayrshire.
And he commented: “I’ve seen it over the last five or 10 years in the local community how much she has done, how much she brings enthusiasm and her knowledge of the game.”
Asked if she is Scotland’s greatest football export, Naismith responded: “Without a doubt, she’s the only person with a World Cup winner’s medal. She stands on her own.
“She’s somebody who has been fantastic at promoting women’s football but not just that, she’s great at getting young people involved in football in general. Her enthusiasm for the game and the way she talks about the game is amazing, it’s infectious.
“I grew up in Stewarton, where she’s from, and playing for local teams and not having heard anything about Rose, or her achievements.
“It’s taken 20, 25 years of probably being mentioned on the off chance and being a bit trivial, to be recognised and also for her to be able to inspire everybody, through no fault of her own.”
‘I’ve just fallen in love with her story’
Singer Eddi Reader said: “The fact she’s a female and such a high achiever and the Scots let her go is just the same old, same old Scotland shooting itself in the foot.
“When I first met her she was in the corner of the room at a sort of press junket thing and I went up and asked her if she was a reporter. She just laughed at me and then she told me her whole story.
“So when I was jumping off bunk beds to Bay City Rollers there was this woman away off in Italy winning World Cups! I’ve found a real fondness for her since we met.
“There we had a world champion right there. She won it for Italy, she could have won it for us. So I’ve just fallen in love with her story.
“She’s now telling her story to everyone and it’s really inspiring. There are lots of wee lassies that love football and she’s really encouraging them and people are going to be drawn to her story. It won’t happen again.”
‘Phenomenal vision and drive’
Actress Maureen Carr first heard about Reilly through a documentary and commented: “I researched her story with Lorna Martin [with the view of writing a play about her life] and there were just so many things she achieved. We couldn’t put it all in the play! We were on at the Oran Mor and then we took the play to Milan. I, terrifyingly, played Rose when we took it on tour.
“A few young female footballers came along in Milan to see the play because they’d heard about Rose. People knew her in Milan, people came along to see the play and they met Rose.
“I just think she had something. There’s something about Rose that she wanted to be a footballer and she did it and that was her, down the line.
“People were saying, ‘you won’t be able to do this, don’t do this’. She had so many barriers put up but, as she would say, she smashed them down. Her vision and drive are phenomenal.”
‘She simply wanted to play football’
Journalist Mina Rzouki said: “Football in Italy is more than just a game. It represents an identity, a culture, a lifestyle.
“Women all their life chase freedom as it’s been denied to us many times and I think you’ll always look up to icons who offer you freedom. That is what Rose Reilly really did for woman at the time.
“She simply wanted to play football and she was going to do everything she could to achieve that dream. There was no agenda, there was no desire to change the world, it was simply, ‘I really want to do this, how can I go about doing this?’
“Rose Reilly showed that you could be a female footballer even when that option seems closed to you, you can do it.”
Interview: Rose Reilly on why she was never going to turn down MBE
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/international/interview-rose-reilly-on-why-she-was-never-going-to-turn-down-mbe-1398429
One must hope those in charge of the sports centre
in Stewarton that is set to be renamed in Rose Reilly’s
honour haven’t commissioned the signage yet. Another three letters are required.
By ALAN PATTULLO
Published 2nd Jan 2020, 22:35 BST
Scotland’s most successful women’s footballer has just bid farewell to a remarkable year that ended with her being awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list.
And the celebrations haven’t stopped. Reilly turned 65 yesterday.
She marked this milestone in a local restaurant with her husband Norberto and daughter Valentina, who turns 20 next month.
This year is set to be as significant as the last one. As well as a date at Buckingham Palace and the official sports centre renaming ceremony in her hometown, she is the subject of a new play by writer and actor Maureen Carr, which is scheduled for runs in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Reilly is continuing to receive belated recognition after a career spent at the very top of women’s football while also inspiring a new generation of budding female players.
“There are already around 40 wee girls who have subscribed to mini-football here in Stewarton,” she says. “Kids stop me in the street for selfies – and more often than not they are girls. It gives me so much pleasure when I see their wee faces and they are looking at me as if I was bloody Ronaldo or someone.
“I can’t go down the street [without being stopped]. Everyone is so proud. Everyone is happy for me. I just think: ‘wow’. I did not realise I had such an impact. Half of them I do not even know. I am proud for my wee village – and I am so proud of the honour.”
The MBE is for services to women’s football the world over, not just Scotland. Indeed, her impact was limited here at first due to narrow-minded authorities. Handed a life ban by the SFA in the early 1970s for having the temerity to play abroad, she made her name in Italy, winning eight Serie A titles, the first two with AC Milan, as well as a world championship medal (an unofficial forerunner of the World Cup) for her adopted country. She also won the league with Stade de Reims in France.
When she returned to her homeland in 2000, few except her old headmaster from secondary school in Kilmarnock recognised her. “Rose Reilly!” he exclaimed. By now a frail figure in a wheelchair, his eyes gave his identity away – they were the ones Reilly stared into as he told her she was being expelled for, among other things, missing lessons to play football. He told her he bitterly regretted this decision.
Reilly has been portrayed as anti-establishment ever since, her SFA troubles only helping to cement the reputation. Which is why, she reveals, some of her friends were surprised when she accepted her MBE. Refusing the honour didn’t cross her mind. “Not for a nanosecond,” she says.
In addition, she’s all for the pomp and circumstance of the actual investiture. “I would like the horse and cart – I would like the carriage. I want the bloody lot!” she laughs.
“I am anti-authority but I have never disrespected anyone in my life,”
Reilly explains. “I speak my mind but I don’t disrespect anyone. They maybe thought I’d turn it down because I am a Catholic and it’s the monarchy. Maybe because I am Scottish and it is the monarchy. I do not know. I did not even dig into it because I am not interested. No one is going to burst my bubble.”
She’s enjoying such appreciation in her homeland, later in life though it is. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Glasgow Caledonian University last year and was given a standing ovation after her speech. “All these bloomin’ intellectuals applauding me!” she says. It was a sweet moment for someone whose formal education ended with her expulsion from school aged 15. Ayrshire College, meanwhile, recently awarded her and former Rangers striker Kris Boyd honorary fellowships. They were bracketed together
as Ayrshire footballing heroes, another step forward for the women’s game. She’s also been asked to support causes such as domestic violence against women in Ayrshire and took part in a torchlight march through Irvine.
Reilly attributes these accolades to the surge of publicity around a documentary about her life broadcast by BBC Alba on the eve of the women’s World Cup finals in France last summer, for which Scotland had qualified for the first ever time.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon also presented her and three other former international team-mates with the cap they were denied during their careers before a friendly against Jamaica at Hampden in May.
As for the MBE, she was sworn to secrecy weeks ago following the confirmation letter. “If the Queen tells you to do something, you do it!” she says. “I just told my husband and my daughter because I trust them – obviously. Then I just put it aside. But it didn’t stop me savouring it to myself every morning when I woke up and every night when I went to bed.”
Valentina, her daughter, ensured her mother’s feet remained on the ground. “When I told my daughter, I think there was a wee tear in her eye. But she doesn’t ever show much emotion to her mammy. About two seconds later she said, ‘what’s for tea tonight?’ That’s the way I brought her up, that’s the way it is.”
Reilly found herself tossed unwittingly into one of the last great controversies of 2019. As she wryly notes, it’s not like her to be in the eye of a storm.
Hers was one of over 1,000 addresses of New Year Honours recipients published on a website in error by the Cabinet Office. The details were visible for around an hour last week. She has already had a letter of apology in the post – “Notification of data breach” stamped across it. At least there was no trouble locating her address.
“I have not stopped laughing,” she says. “They were apologising for blah, blah, blah. Elton John’s was one of the addresses – a villa in St Tropez! And a mansion in London. And here’s Rose – a wee house in a street in Stewarton!”
She’s sanguine about most things, including her past treatment by the SFA. “The lifetime ban thing was all in the past,” she says. “Even when it did happen, I was not angry so why would I be angry years down the line?”
While Reilly takes it all in her stride there’s a downside to becoming so well known. Social media sees to that. Sometimes she gives as good as she gets.
Her profile rocketed further when she was invited along with Hibs’ Steven Whittaker to make the draw for the Scottish Cup third round live on Sportscene in October. Inevitably, this inspired some cruel, sexist comments amid the supportive ones. A friend informed her of a tweet where she was unkindly described as the “mother of Methadone Mick”, a character from Still Game.
“It could be worse, I could be your maw,” she instructed her pal to reply. Don’t mess with Rose Reilly, MBE.
Women’s football trailblazer Rose Reilly’s life story set to be brought to the stage
https://www.scotsman.com/regions/womens-football-trailblazer-rose-reillys-life-story-set-to-be-brought-to-the-stage-1397356
She was the footballing traiblazer who famously quit Scotland after runs-ins with the authorities in her home country over their refusal to recognise the women’s game and became a household name in Italy.
By The Newsroom
Published 14th Jan 2020, 06:00 BST
Rose Reilly at the Scottish Football Museums Hall of Fame. Picture: SNS
Rose Reilly at the Scottish Football Museums Hall of Fame. Picture: SNS
Now the remarkable story of Rose Reilly, who was crowned the world’s best female footballer after being banned from the game for life in Scotland, is to inspire a new stage play.
The life and legacy of Ayrshire-born Reilly, who was also a World Cup winner with Italy, is being brought to the stage by the lunchtime theatre company A Play, a Pie and a Pint.
It will recall the prejudices she faced and the barriers put in her way by the men running Scottish football over her ambitions to become a professional player.
Reilly, who began her career at Stewarton Boys Club, Ayrshire, played for Scotland against England in Greenock when she was 17, in a match which Scots football authorities refused to recognise.
Reilly, who was handed her life ban after deciding to pursue a professional career in France, won the league with Reims. After a six-month spell she secured a move to AC Milan and by the time she retired from the game at the age of 40, she had won eight league titles in Italy.
However it was not until 2007 that Reilly was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Scotland, a few months before she was honoured with a place in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. She was still a relatively little-known figure until a new documentary on Reilly was shown on BBC Alba in the run-up to the Women’s World Cup, which Scotland qualified for.
The show caught the eye of actor and director Maureen Carr, founder of Glasgow comedy collective Whitsherface, who has joined forces with the playwright and author Lorna Martin to create “Rose,” which tour Glasgow, Greenock and Edinburgh in April.
News of the play has emerged less than a month after Reilly was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List and less than a year after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon presented Reilly and three other former internationalists with their caps from the England game in 1972.
Reilly, who is now 65, said: “I met with Maureen for a chat and we had a great laugh for about three hours. The play is a great honour as I symbolise a Scottish women and what she did against the odds. I did it myself – I didn’t have any back-up from anyone, I just went for it. It will be the story of my life – it won’t just be about football.
“I wasn’t angry when I heard I had banned from playing in Scotland – I don’t get angry. I just wanted to get on with my career in Italy. I got asked to play for the country after five years, which I was very proud of. But it was a Scottish heart beating inside an Italian jersey.
“I’ve never been bitter or had any regrets about what happened. I really just wanted to play football. Looking back at how we were treated, or mistreated, it was very chauvinistic, but there was a lot of male chauvinism in life in general. The feeling was that football just wasn’t for women and that we shouldn’t be playing.”
Martin said: “I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of Rose Reilly until Maureen sent me Margot McCuaig’s BBC Alba documentary. When I watched it I just thought it was an absolute gift. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to tell a story like this. There are so many fantastic vignettes about Rose. As wellas being incredibly inspiring, she is also really funny.”
Rose Reilly MBE: The royal honour, the Celtic approach and the pioneer in the tartan dress
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/rose-reilly-mbe-for-the-first-time-i-can-say-youve-done-it-rose-3536009
Although Rose Reilly’s feet once did most of her talking, she is very rarely tongue tied. There is always a first time for everything.
By Alan Pattullo
Published 21st Jan 2022, 07:00 BST
Comment
She feared being stuck for something to say at Holyrood House on Wednesday as she belatedly accepted an MBE awarded in the New Year’s Honours list of 2020.
After so many battles in the name of women’s football, Reilly isn’t the type to stand on ceremony for anyone. But she is willing to make exceptions. A couple of days ago was one of those occasions as he curtsied in front of Princess Anne. Reilly looked resplendent in a Black Watch tartan suit.
The tattoos on her lower right arm were still visible – a Celtic cross and the outline of Sicily, where the curtain fell on her illustrious football career.
Rose Reilly after receiving her MBE during an Investiture ceremony at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. (Picture: PA)
Rose Reilly after receiving her MBE during an Investiture ceremony at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. (Picture: PA)
She was a prophet without honour in her own country for decades but that isn’t the case any longer. Work is already underway on a film by Skye-based Chris Young, producer of The Inbetweeners, with the working title “Life of Reilly”.
A BBC documentary chronicling her story was first broadcast three years ago and a play, ‘Rose’, is set for a run in Milan this Spring after being staged in Glasgow and Edinburgh last year.
There’s even a sports centre named after her in her hometown of Stewarton, near the pitches where she first engaged in what felt like the illicit act of playing football.
She kept her hair short so she could play in the local boys’ team but that could work only so long. She was causing such a stir that Celtic approached someone they thought was a boy wonder.
All this recognition is better late than never for Rose Reilly, MBE.
“You wait your turn until you are called,” she says while detailing the order of events at the ‘Investiture at the Palace of Holyroodhouse’, as it is termed on the front of the programme.
“When I went into the room, Princess Anne was there, the violins were playing Vivaldi or whatever – it was lovely. Your mind can go blank if you’re too excited. I approached her and curtsied and said: ‘Your Royal Highness, it is such an honour to get an MBE from a fellow sportswoman. She said: ‘Thank you.’
“You have to acknowledge that. She was in the Olympics. She is an Olympian. She said to me: ‘I read your story, Rose. How come you played for Italy? I don’t understand that.’
“I said: ‘Because youse banned me!’
She said: ‘Oh dear.’ She added: ‘Women’s football is growing now.’ I said: ‘Thanks to us pioneers!’ And she said: ‘Absolutely!’”
Reilly is quick to add that Princess Anne wasn’t personally responsible for the Scotland ban. Indeed, she would have abhorred such restrictions for female footballers, common place at the time on both sides of the Border.
The Queen’s only daughter operated under no such constraints, even named BBC sports personality of 1971 – the year before Reilly and her friend Edna Neillis were forced to move to France to play professionally. The SFA blanched at such insurrectionist behaviour. They banned them sine die.
As Willie Allan, then secretary of the SFA, remarked: ‘It’s not a game for girls.’ That was not the case in France and Italy, where Reilly carved her name in history, winning eight Serie A titles and two golden boots with a variety of sides, including AC Milan.
Attitudes in her own country have now changed thanks to trailblazers such as Reilly. She was inducted in the Scottish sports Hall of Fame at an event not far from where we are speaking on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile – her MBE has been passed around everybody present for inspection.
That original recognition came as late as 2007, over a decade after she called time on her professional career at the age of 40. She then met her husband Norberto, with whom she has a daughter, Valentina, now 21.
Due to Covid restrictions, Reilly, 67, was only allowed one other guest at the investiture. She asked Valentina, who selflessly decided that her dad should be the one by his wife’s side.
Reilly had an option of waiting until the summer when a garden party is due to be held for the next batch of investees. Having already waited two years, she wasn’t keen for another delay.
“They wrote a letter saying it might be quicker and easier to send it to me in the post,” she explains. “Otherwise, some local worthy could come round and give it to me. No, no …it’s a royal honour and I want it from royalty!”
A boyhood Celtic fan with Irish family ties, she had no qualms about accepting an award viewed by some as rooted in Britain’s imperial past. Brian Wilson, a Celtic director, was present to receive an OBE for services to British industry at the same ceremony.
“When the envelope arrived, from Buckingham Palace, I was physically shaking…I was so, so proud because it’s for women’s football. It was, literally, ‘for services to women’s football’,” she says.
“I have Irish background, I’m Catholic – but that does not come into the equation. It is an honour. And when someone gives you an honour, you should be honoured. I am honoured.
“When I won the World Cup, and the world’s best footballer accolade, that was… elation. You are feeling high, off the ground, because it is a sporting achievement.
“You have achieved everything you worked for, it is your love, your passion. But this award is when your feet are on the ground. You can take it all in. It is the first time in my life where I can rest on my laurels and say: ‘You’ve done it Rose!’
“To be recognised in your hame country – I always say hame country, never home – and now I feel like I am hame. That’s why I have my tartan dress on.”
Rose Reilly Joins Celtic FC as Women’s Team Ambassador
https://www.celticfc.com/news/2023/september/04/rose-reilly-joins-celtic-fc-as-women-s-team-ambassador/
Women’s Football
By Celtic Football Club
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04 Sep 2023, 11:18 am
Celtic Football Club is delighted to announce Scottish footballing legend Rose Reilly as the new Ambassador of Celtic FC Women.
Rose has dedicated her life to women’s football, playing in Scotland, France and Italy at club level, and in 1984 she captained the Italian side which won the Mundialito (a precursor to the women’s World Cup).
She was voted best player in the Italian team and scored one of the goals in the 3-1 victory over West Germany in the final.
Rose eventually retired aged 40, having won eight Serie A titles, a French title and four Italian Cups.
All her life she has campaigned to promote women’s football and Celtic is delighted to be able to call on her knowledge and experience.
Rose has gained renowned status in Scotland, with an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow and induction to the Scottish Hall of Fame.
As a trailblazer for women’s football, Rose joins Celtic as Ambassador, a representative of the club, to support the players and contribute to the growth of the game in Scotland.
As an avid Celtic fan, Rose proudly displays a Hoops jersey with the No.7 on the back and reflects on her experience as a youngster when she played for a local boys’ team in the Ayrshire town of Stewarton.
She explained: “There was a game and a Celtic scout had come to watch. I scored about eight goals and the scout wanted to sign the number seven – the ‘wee boy who got all the goals’.
“My manager told him, ‘You can’t, she’s a wee lassie!’ I was devastated that I couldn’t play for Celtic, I just thought if I’m good enough, then why not?”
‘Look at me now! That wee number seven’s dream has finally come true!’
Celtic FC Women’s manager, Fran Alonso added: “What a signing we have made! To have Rose joining us as our Ambassador is fantastic news.
“Rose is an absolute legend in the game and a brilliant example for our players, someone who I know will inspire each and every one of the players to even greater heights. We are delighted to welcome Rose to the Club.”
The Club would like to thank Rose for her commitment to Celtic FC Women and look forward to working with her in the seasons to come.