Parr featured for Dick, Kerr Ladies against St Helens Ladies at Everton's Goodison Park on Boxing Day 1920, drawing a record women's football crowd of around 53,000.
On Boxing Day, 26 December 1920, Lily Parr played for Dick, Kerr Ladies against St Helens Ladies at Everton's Goodison Park stadium in Liverpool. The match drew an official crowd of approximately 53,000 spectators, with thousands more reportedly locked outside unable to gain entry — a figure that stood as a record attendance for a women's club football match for decades.
This extraordinary turnout, rivaling attendances at top men's professional matches of the era, demonstrated the immense popularity that women's football had achieved in the years following the First World War. Dick, Kerr Ladies, with Parr as one of their star forwards, had become a genuine sporting phenomenon, playing exhibition and charity matches that raised significant funds for ex-servicemen, hospitals, and other causes.
The scale of this crowd is historically significant because it directly contradicts later narratives — often used to justify the FA's 1921 ban — that women's football lacked genuine public interest. Instead, the Goodison Park match stands as powerful evidence that women's football was a mainstream sporting draw, threatening to rival the men's game in popularity in some regions. Parr's performances in matches like this cemented her personal fame and made her arguably the first global female sporting celebrity in football, years before the sport would be formally suppressed by football authorities.