A TRAILBLAZING star of sport from Weymouth features in a powerful sonnet on women's football by the UK's first female poet laureate.

Pat Dunn, the world's first woman referee, is referenced in the stirring poem by Carol Ann Duffy.

We See You was written to pay tribute to England’s Lionesses and a game Duffy says she has “loved from childhood”.

The poem was composed for the WeSeeYou Network, which celebrates women in football and offers mentoring, training and networking opportunities for women in sport.

It is “an ode to every woman from the pitch to the boardroom, the communities and grassroots who are helping to level the playing field”, said Duffy, who was poet laureate from 2009 to 2019.

Honoured in the poem is Weymouth's Pat Dunn, who had to fight to be permitted to oversee men’s matches.

"We see you too, Pat Dunn – you blew your whistle

and the game kicked off for women referees.

“Red card for misogyny. Free kick in progress. We’re all onside,” says Duffy’s poem.

Dunn worked in the quiet confines of the Dorset Echo accounts department. At weekends she stepped into an altogether different world – that of men’s football.

Her struggle to gain acceptance in a male-dominated world was not easy.

When she passed the official referee’s examination in 1967, the FA said regulations did not permit a registration certificate to be issued to a woman.

Undeterred, Dunn wrote to the then Minister of Sport, Dennis Howell, and also to the Queen, in a bid to persuade the FA to give her official recognition.

It was not until May 1976 that the FA relented and told her she could officially take charge of men’s matches.

The following month she was registered by the Dorset County Football Association as a referee and made history in September that year, when she was the first woman to referee an official FA game.

In February 1979 she was promoted and could officially take charge of games in the First Division of the Dorset League. In the same year her quick thinking saved Portland footballer Pat Matthews, when she gave him the kiss of life when he stopped breathing after being injured during a match.

Dunn, who came to Weymouth as a child evacuee during the war, died in 1999.

Duffy said she hoped the project would identify talented girls from less advantaged backgrounds that could be nurtured to become great players. “It’s not called the beautiful game for nothing. It’s sublime to watch.”

“The Lionesses seem to spread such joy, and a sense of possibility,” she said.

“Young girls today really believe they can do it. People forget that for 50 years women’s football was banned by the FA.

"When the Lionesses won the Euros, they were effectively 50 years down at half-time. It was an incredible achievement.”

We See You – by Carol Ann Duffy

That rain-heavy, leather ball your left foot smashed a century ago

has reached us here, and so we see you, Lily Parr,

in hindsight’s extra time; linked to our female, family chain

of passing forwards … to Mary Phillip, first black Captain

of the Pride, Katie Chapman, Carly Telford, Millie Bright.

We see you too, Pat Dunn – you blew your whistle

and the game kicked off for women referees. Red card for misogyny,

Free kick for progress. We’re all onside. Team-sheets are the dreams

of managers – shout out the golden days of Emma Hayes – which make us visible

to thirty, forty, fifty thousand fans … so good, so good, so good …

from grassroots team to League to Euros to the World. Now.

Women’s voices – Eni Aluko, Karen Carney – tell the poetry of play

We’ll find you – 10 years old, girl with ball, incredible to be you.

So here’s our Team Talk: We’re right behind you. And we see you.