Val Robinson (field hockey)


Valerie Robinson OBE is a former England and Great Britain field hockey international, who played 149 international games and represented her country for more than 20 years.

Hockey

She started to play hockey at the age of 14 for Accrington High School and became the first working class girl to be capped by England when she won her first cap in 1963. The highlight of her international career was winning a World Championship with England in 1975 in Edinburgh. She was, however, denied the opportunity to compete in the inaugural women's hockey event at the Olympics due to the British team's boycott of the games.
She later became a PE teacher and then in 1980 opened a residential hockey centre. She won two series of multi-sport TV competition Superstars - 1979 and 1981, and in 1985 she was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to her sport. She continued to play competitive hockey for Blackburn Northern into the late 1990s.

Football

Robinson also played football for Accrington Ladies, but the team folded in 1959 when she was 16 years old. She then became one of several players to join nearby Preston Ladies. Preston's manager Kath Latham recalled: "Matt Busby came to see one of our matches at Blackpool. He sat in the stands and remarked to the people around him that Val was the best player he had ever seen in his life and if she had been a man, he would have signed her up there and then, to play for Manchester United!" In the 1962 season Robinson was named Preston's joint-Player of the Year and Sheila Parker was Young Player of the Year. Robinson stopped playing football shortly afterwards, to focus on her hockey career.