Dream career from 'nightmare' trip

By Tanya Gupta
BBC News Online, South East

Hy Money's portraits include boxing champion Muhammed Ali

For a young mother who hated football, it appeared to be her worst nightmare.

Her soccer-mad son had been promised a trip to see his beloved Crystal Palace play - by his father who now had other plans for the day.

Instead, Hy Money - who was still nervous about driving in London - was left with the task of making sure the youngster got to the game.

Mrs Money expected a wasted afternoon but instead the trip catapulted her into a career where she would be a pioneer for women.

Mrs Money, born in India and of Portuguese and Irish descent, arrived in England with £15 and a box brownie camera.

She took the simple camera everywhere she went - including Selhurst Park for the Crystal Palace game.

And although her first efforts at sports photography were tentative and unsophisticated, she knew where her destiny lay.

Thirty four years later, Mrs Money is now exhibiting her work after snapping some of sport's greatest legends - including Muhammed Ali and Martina Navratilova.

She blazed a trail for women journalists - after facing up to an industry still steeped in sexism.

Yet, her earliest inspiration came from snapping simple shots of children.

In pictures: Hy Money

Mrs Money said: "All my life I had been photographing my children and they were always action pictures.

"I took pictures of them running towards me, jumping off sand dunes, doing cartwheels, standing on their heads, eating spaghetti, falling asleep.

"I wanted to capture their vibrancy, their vitality and their exuberance.

"It is the same with football. You capture the moment when they are flying through the air, when their hair is standing on end, when the goalkeeper collapses on the floor.

"You need to breathe the cold air on a winter's day with your fingers going blue. You need to be there."

Her big break came when the Croydon Advertiser published her pictures during the first football season she attended.

"I had a quirky look. I was getting something different," she said.

"I never pushed, I never shoved. I was always polite, quiet and gentle.

She photographed motorcycling champion Barry Sheene

"I did get overlooked and pushed aside, but if I wanted something badly enough, I would find a way of doing it."

Her husband objected to her career and she said other sports photographers fought her every inch of the way.

"They made fun of me in the press room and asked if I had brought my knitting," she said.

And in the mid-1970s, she said she was barred from Wembley even though she had a photographer's pass.

"The man on the door told me they couldn't have 'a woman on the sacred turf'," she said.

She still has a newspaper cutting reporting how she was refused entry and how Football Association policy then did not allow women to photograph matches.

'A man's world'

She said a press officer later apologised.

It was not the only time she was singled out for being a woman - in 1974 she was thrown into a bath during celebrations after Cardiff beat Crystal Palace and avoided relegation.

"They weren't used to seeing a woman photographer," she said.

"I said 'what about my equipment'. They said 'there's nothing wrong with your equipment'.

"I borrowed a man's tracksuit to wear on the train home.

It's still a man's world, but they have to let women in. It's literally their 'pitch' Hy Money

"I had a pocket full of film. I laugh now, but I was furious at the time. It was a whole night's work ruined."

Mrs Money, who lives near East Grinstead, went on to sell her work to the Evening Standard and Daily Mail.

Since then, her work has appeared in books, magazines and sports pages and she can still be found taking friends' wedding pictures.

The last match she photographed was at the Millennium Stadium, when Crystal Palace played West Ham in June this year.

"I turned up with my press pass in one pocket and my bus pass in the other," she said.

She believes women are more accepted now.

"They are in board rooms. They are presenting. They are on the radio," she said.

"It's still a man's world, but they have to let women in.

"It's literally their 'pitch'. There will always be a bit of that."

Hy Money's unpublished work can be seen on display until 17 September in an exhibition at Wealden House, East Grinstead.