Lynn Carey first played football in Mount Isa in 1976. Lynn remembers there being at least five or six teams and that the competition was organised by Kerry Watson, whose daughter played. Team names included ‘The Chippewas’, ‘The Rippers’, and ‘The Sundowners’ (see the North West Star article which reports on the competition in Mt Isa during 1977). Women’s Soccer Queensland estimate that as many as 100 players registered and suggest there were 8 teams in the competition in 1976. Lynn distinctly remembers playing in the suffocating heat on terrible, rock hard pitches full of pot holes.

Lynn reckons ‘the girls played because football was a bit different’. Her interest began with family. Her father’s interest in the game and with her brothers playing. “My father wasn’t happy” Lynn said of her determination to play. “He thought girls had no right to play.” This commonly held belief in Mt Isa (and elsewhere) only served to strengthen her enthusiasm.

The football community reflected the multicultural and relatively transient population of the Western Queensland mining town. Coaches hailed from former Yugoslavia and Europe including the French Portuguese coach – Fernando.