Fleapit revisited:Copa '71:The Lost Lionesses.

"It was something magical" - Nicole Mangas

"I felt free for the first time" - Silvia Zaragoza

"I remember thinking I'm never going to see anything like this again" - Carol Wilson

Mexico, 1971, the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City and the Jalisco stadium in Guadalajara. Huge crowds cheer on the six teams taking part in the first ever women's football World Cup. An enormously popular and, it looks, hugely thrilling event yet an event that was never officially recognised. Most of the players returned home to indifference or even criticism. Many of them never spoke about taking part in Copa '71 ever again.

Or at least for a good fifty years. Now Copa '71:The Lost Lionesses (BBC4/iPlayer/part of the usually excellent Storyville strand) picks up the story again using film footage that has been hidden for half a century and interviews with many of players from that tournament (as well as the odd journalist or historian).

There's Argentina's Elisa Selva, Silvia Zaragoza and Elvira Aracen from Mexico, Denmark's Birte Kjems and Ann Stengaard, Nicole Mangas for France, Elena Schiavo for Italy, and plenty of English players. Most notably Carol Wilson and Trudy McCaffery.

Wilson talks about how, as a child - out with her dad, she heard a huge, euphoric, roar coming from Newcastle's St.James' Park and decided there and then that she wanted to become a footballer. But she wasn't allowed to play football at school. It wasn't a game for girls. They could play netball or hockey.

Zaragoza tells how her dad would hit her if she was caught playing football though Schiavo gave as good as she got. She beat up the boys if they didn't let her join in their games. Historian David Goldblatt is on hand to explain how enormously popular women's football was just over a hundred years ago and how, in 1921, it was cracked down on by authorities who believed, or pretended to believe, that it was bad for women's wombs and ovaries.

In both Italy and Brazil it became a criminal offence for women to play football! Others just saw it as a bit of a joke, men turned up to check out the women's legs and some would shout "get back in the kitchen" from the stands. One peculiar chap even turns up to describe women's football as "a curiosity - both erotic and comedic"! FIFA believed women's football to be both 'disreputable' and 'immoral'.

Neither they, nor the national federations, recognised Copa '71 as an official World Cup. The Mexican crowds, however, weren't bothered - Mexicans do football supporting very well. They turned up in their tens of thousands to watch two groups of three (Argentina, England (managed by Harry Batt and sponsored by Martini Rossi), and Mexico in Group A, Denmark, France, and Italy in Group B) play round robin games and then semi finals, a final, a third place play off, and a fifth place play off.

I won't go too much into results (no spoilers) except to say when it comes to the game between England and Argentina you'll come to the conclusion that some things never change. The players were treated like superstars, the quality of football was excellent, and the crowds made a lot of noise. The games were even shown on television but when the women started to suggest they ought to be paid for their work it was quite extraordinary just how much resistance the male authorities put up.

Copa '71 can be viewed as a straight ahead football documentary or a piece of historical agit-prop film making but it's best taken as both. There's a brief introduction by Serena Williams, there's lots of female vocalists from the era on the soundtrack (Carole King, Nancy Sinatra, Kiki Dee) and, by the end, it's rather an emotional watch.

It's incredible that such a successful tournament was pretty much forgotten about almost instantly. It's even sadder that it didn't lay the groundwork for the revival of women's football. It's taken decades for the women's game to get to the level it is now. That's because there are less Joey Barton types around than there used to be. But there are, sadly, still some. Like Joey Barton himself. I'd rather watch, and listen to, Carol Wilson, Silvia Zaragoza, and Birte Kjems than him. I would have loved to have watch them play football in Mexico back in 1971. As that's not possible, watching Copa '71 felt like a more than adequate substitution.