Eva Haniaková

"On my first day in school, I went to Slavia in the afternoon. It's in Výtoň, close to Vyšehrad, and you could take a 4 tram or a 27 tram all the way to Vršovice. Being a village girl, I took a 17, a 3 and a 25 and went the long way. I was a stocky girl with a few more kilos compared with today, and when I kicked the ball I really sent it flying. From that very first moment back in 1969, I was with Slavia for 20 years. When I lived in Czechia, in Czechoslovakia at the time, I only played with Slavia."

"It was a small village, so there were two sports to do. You could ski because there were hills there, not mountains. I would cross-country ski competitively until age fifteen. Then there was football. It looked like this: we would agree to meet in the afternoon, the village's top end versus the bottom end. I lived five kilometres away from the school, so I either walked or took the bus. On the bus, we'd go: 'What are we going to do? How about football? Okay, let's go!' We'd meet at the local playground, and the top end played the bottom end. When there were not enough players, Eva was in demand. When there were a lot of them, it was, Eva, go play with the girls or go cooking. That's how I got my start in football. It got a bit more professional in 1968 when the (cycling) Peace Race in May went through Liberec. We went to Liberec to see it because there were additional events at the finish, and one of those events... I saw the Slavia girls' team there. That's when I saw women's football for the first time."