THE 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which gets underway on Friday with hosts France playing South Korea in Paris, is expected to smash records for live attendances, television audiences and commercial revenue. Women’s football is, after all, said to be the fastest growing sport on the planet.

None of this could have been predicted in 1991. Although there has been a men’s World Cup since 1930, the first women’s tournament wasn’t sanctioned by FIFA until over 60 years later. It was held in China and won by the United States, who beat Norway 2-1 in the final.

Since then there have been six more, held, like the men’s World Cup, every four years. The USA continues to lead the way with three wins, Germany have two, while Norway and Japan – who are in Scotland’s group in France – have one apiece.

The best indicator of how the tournament has taken off can be seen from the 1991 and 2015 tournaments. The USA women’s team only played its first international game in 1985, and when six years later they triumphed in China, it barely registered back home.

It was entirely different when the last World Cup final was played in Vancouver. Some 23 million American viewers – a record for any soccer match in the States – tuned in to watch their side claim a third World Cup by beating Japan 5-2.

As ever in the history of this sport, male hostility was the reason for the late arrival of the women’s World Cup, but there were unofficial tournaments of varying credibility in earlier years of the twentieth century.

Two so-called “World Cups” were held in quick succession in 1970 and 1971. The first, in Italy, was won by Denmark, and the Danes were also triumphant the following year, this time in Mexico. That tournament attracted big crowds, including a reputed 110,000 at the final, but was undermined by the organisers’

insistence on the players wearing “feminine” strips – a standpoint which was to resurface in 2004, and from none other than the then FIFA president, Sepp Blatter.

The 50th anniversary of the men’s World Cup was celebrated by a FIFA-organised Mundialito (little World Cup) in Uruguay. It was nevertheless an unofficial tournament, but appears to have been the inspiration for five women’s Mundialitos in the 1980s. The first was in Japan in 1981, and the other four in Italy between 1984 and 1988, but none of them had the FIFA imprint.

From a Scottish perspective the most poignant was the 1984 tournament. That was when Stewarton’s Rose Reilly, playing for the Italians, scored the second goal in a 3-1 win over West Germany in the final.

Reilly’s truly inspirational story is the subject of a terrific documentary on BBC Alba tonight, but it is stretching it to describe her as a World Cup winner. The 1984 Mundialito was a four-team invitational tournament, also involving Belgium and England, and all the participating nations were from Europe.

FIFA finally got involved in 1988 when they staged an invitational tournament, again in China, to see if a women’s World Cup was feasible. It was held from June 1-12, drew decent crowds, and 16 days later the world governing body gave the green light for the first official championship in 1991.

The power of a World Cup has been illustrated by the huge hike in media and public interest in the Scotland women’s team since they qualified for their first global tournament. The last home qualifier, against Switzerland at the Simple Digital Arena in August, drew a record crowd of 4,098 – but that was emphatically eclipsed on Tuesday night when 18,555 were inside Hampden for the send-off 3-2 win against Jamaica.

The television viewing figures should now also be healthy for the Group D games against England (June 9), Japan (June 14) and Argentina (June 19). Should the squad achieve Shelley Kerr’s target of qualifying for the last 16 – which no Scottish side, male or female, has ever done at a major championship – the nation will be gripped.

The task of Kerr and her players has to be put into perspective by the fact that Japan won the tournament in 2011 and were beaten finalists four years ago. England, who are now managed by Phil Neville, won the bronze medal in 2015.

Nevertheless, with the four best third-place teams from the six groups qualifying for the knockout stages, reaching the last 16 is achievable. A win over Argentina, the lowest-ranked side in Group D by 17 places, could be enough, regardless of results in the earlier Nice and Rennes games.