“He had this dream of women’s football,” Keith Batt recalls of his father.

“He talked about it for as long as I can I remember. ‘Women’s football,' he said, ‘it’s going to be the future’. Those were his words: ‘It’s going to be the future.’”

Harry and June Batt’s eyes had been opened by the professional women’s league in Italy, and they didn’t see why the same couldn’t happen in England.

Before the Mexico trip, Harry told a local paper he hoped to find a sponsor for Chiltern Valley Ladies within two years.

In another article, June said: “I am certain that in the future there will be full-time professional ladies’ teams in this country, and we are hoping to be one of the first.”

But that wasn't the WFA’s plan, and Harry’s relationship with the governing body had already broken down by the time he took his team to Mexico City.

The WFA felt he was trying to pass his team off as England. He was accused of luring players with the promise of “a place in the England team” and of using headed paper declaring himself the “England manager”.

Also, the WFA couldn’t consider any moves towards professionalism because its only meagre funding was a small government grant reserved for amateur sport.

Two months before the Mexico trip, the WFA committee declared it would not recognise any team Harry or June Batt were involved with. The Batts were blacklisted.

That also meant Chiltern Valley had to be broken up. If the WFA found out that any Chiltern Valley players were applying to register with other clubs, they were banned for three months – unless they could prove they didn’t realise they had broken WFA rules by travelling to Mexico with the Batts.

At that time, the WFA was working towards setting up its own official England women’s team. Unlike Harry Batt’s more ad hoc approach of inviting selected players to join girls from his club side, the WFA organised a series of nationwide trials.

Patricia Gregory had become the WFA’s honorary assistant secretary and went on to be its secretary and chairman. “We had a fledgling organisation. We were trying to do the best we could for everybody,” she explains. “And that relied on being fair to everybody.

“You couldn’t have anybody being rogue and taking a team, whatever the team was, and calling it something it was not entitled to be called. It wasn’t fair to all the other players that we were trying to represent and look after.

“He didn’t just do it once. He went to two Italian competitions [as well as Mexico]. I still think it was right to stop somebody portraying a team as England that wasn’t England, or even Great Britain. That was not fair on everybody else.”

The official WFA-backed England team was assembled by November 1972, beating Scotland 3-2 in their debut match in heavy snow in Greenock.

The first official England women's squad in 1972 The first official England women's squad in 1972

Harry Batt was a shrewd and persuasive operator who successfully put his team on the world stage. Whether he really could have organised and raised the profile of women’s football in England on a wider scale - beyond his team's own exploits - is another matter.

But after Mexico, he was involved in another plan that could have catapulted women’s football to the big time.

Ted Hart, who had worked as a PR man for England during the 1970 men's World Cup, approached Batt with the idea of holding another women’s World Cup at Wembley in 1972.

The crowds in Mexico had proved such a tournament could be a success. Hart had the backing of 1966 heroes including Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst, and a pledge of £150,000 sponsorship.

Hart suggested that two England teams could take part - an A team assembled by the WFA and a B team put together by Batt. The two factions would have to bury their hatchet first, though - but there was no way the WFA would let that happen.

The WFA voted on whether to host the World Cup – on two conditions. Batt could not be involved, and nor could any teams connected to FIEFF, which had by then been banned by Fifa. The FA warned the WFA off, saying the plan was an attempt at “blatant exploitation” by the sponsors.

The WFA committee was split. In a vote, the idea was initially passed 6-5. But the vote was controversially re-run twice, eventually ending in a 6-6 deadlock. WFA chairman Pat Gwynne used his casting vote to reject the plan. A vote of no confidence was called by those unhappy with how the process had been handled. That ended 5-5. Deadlock.

Ted Hart later wrote to the WFA in dismay that they had spurned the opportunity to “put women’s football firmly on the map” and “convince the television millions that the women’s game, played at its highest level, is both skilful and entertaining”.

Maybe the plan did come too soon. The World Cup was to have taken place before the WFA had even assembled its first official England team. The WFA suggested staging the Women’s World Cup in 1973 instead, but by then the sponsors had pulled out.

Hart and his backers then proposed sponsoring the top teams to form a breakaway superleague, from which they would select an England team to play in another World Cup in England. But not enough teams were prepared to take the risk.

Later in 1972, Harry Batt asked to be allowed back into the WFA fold once more, but to no avail. In the end, it would take decades for women’s football to get close to the profile he had hoped for.