“Go Hannah Go!” reads the giant cardboard sign that greets Hannah Dingley as she heads down the tunnel a touch embarrassed an hour before kick-off at the Oakfield Stadium, home to eighth-tier Melksham Town. It is an unlikely spot for a slice of footballing history to be made but it is here, at the end of a new-build housing estate in this Wiltshire town familiar with life as a thoroughfare, where Dingley became the first female to lead a men’s team in the professional English game. On the night Forest Green Rovers draw 1-1 but it is an evening when the result all feels rather secondary.
A beefy but warm security guard, who got the call at 2.30pm, stands at the gate of the turnstiles. “It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong,” he says. Such is the interest, there is personal security for Dingley too. It is 5.30pm and Alfie Sparks, Forest Green’s first-team analyst, is setting up his camera from a vantage point on halfway. Dan Connor, the goalkeeping coach, arrives and soon afterwards Dingley enters, hopping out of a hatchback before accepting the offer of a cup of tea from the Melksham chairman, Darren Perrin, who was up until the early hours fielding requests from international media. “Tonight was a quiet one until a few things happened yesterday,” Perrin says, grinning.
Namely the small matter of Dingley taking interim charge in the dugout after Forest Green sacked Duncan Ferguson, whose appointment always seemed an odd marriage. Dale Vince, owner of the League Two club, turned to Dingley, their academy manager of four years. She is keen to stress she has not “just rocked up today” and has coached men for much of the past two decades, referencing her days coaching non-league sides Gresley Rovers and Shepshed Dynamo, even if she has lost count of the number of times people have mistaken her for a physio down the years. By the end of Wednesday evening Dingley was busy posing for photos and signing autographs. “Do you know what’s nice with that? How many young girls are down there. Hopefully we are inspiring young girls in football and in any industry that there aren’t these glass ceilings and if there are then you just have to break through them.”
Could Dingley be handed the reins on a full-time basis? “I don’t know if she’s going to apply for it or not. If she does she’ll be in the process with everybody else. We’ll have hundreds of applicants, we’ll do a thorough job and we’ll appoint on merit. It doesn’t matter what your gender is, your sexuality, your race, we’re not interested.” Regardless, Vince hopes Dingley will inspire others. “It could inspire a generation of coaches, to think that there is not a bar and that they can be in the men’s game,” he says.
Forest Green have never shied from pushing the envelope. Last year they became the first team to travel to a sporting event game in a zero-emissions vehicle, a few months after using their advertising hoardings to flash up climate emergency warnings. “Twelve years ago when I rescued Forest Green everyone said that the environment doesn’t belong in football,” Vince says. “[Now] if you speak to directors in League One and Two and the others we’ve been in they are all talking about the environment. And it’s the same with women in football … it’s getting there. Girls and women in football, other sports, non-sports will be thinking: ‘Hell, are there actually any limits?’”
Viv Kennedy, a Forest Green season-ticket holder carrying the aforementioned sign, changed her plans to show her support for Dingley, whom she would like to be given the role permanently. “We decided we wanted to come up and root for her, she’s just so brilliant and we really want her to do well,” Kennedy, from Dursley, says. “I’ve seen her about with the girls’ teams and the academy and she works wonders with them. I reckon she can do the same for the first team. It’s a positive thing, not just for Forest Green but women’s football and football as a whole.”
The more cynical would argue the decision is a stunt, something of a gimmick. How would Vince respond to such a suggestion? “I would say: ‘Fuck off’ … It is just a cheap shot.” It is hard not to smile when Dingley says she is not one for the limelight in front a throng of media 20 minutes after full time. The world’s gaze prompts Vince to say he feels as if he is in an episode of Ted Lasso. “I wanted the attention to be on the players,” Dingley reiterates. “I would like them to get the preparation they need for the campaign and for nothing to take away from that, because if it does then it is probably the wrong thing to do to put me in this position in the first place.”
The stadium announcer tells a crowd of 696 moments before the referee blows for kick-off: “It would be remiss of me not to welcome Hannah Dingley who is making footballing history tonight.” From there, it is business as usual and Forest Green’s first pre-season friendly – and the new season – is up and running. “Everything is possible at the start of the season,” Vince says. His words could hardly capture the moment better.
