Welshwoman Hannah Dingley has made history as the first woman to take charge of an English Football League club.
Forest Green Rovers have appointed Dingley following the departure of Duncan Ferguson, who was appointed in January but was unable to keep the club in League One with Rovers winning just six of their 46 games. Rovers have now moved to install Dingley in interim charge, making her the first woman to lead a men's professional senior team in England.
Dingley, 39, was born and raised in Carmarthen and joined Rovers in 2019 as an academy coach. She remains the only woman to manage a men's EFL academy, while she also initiated the launch of Rovers' girls academy in 2021.
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Dingley faces her first test just 24 hours after taking caretaker charge of the first team, as her side face eighth-tier outfit Melksham Town in a friendly match on Wednesday night.
After her appointment was announced, Dingley said: "I’m really excited for this next step of my career. Pre-season has just begun and the full season kicks off very soon. It’s an exciting time in football. I am grateful for the opportunity to step up and to lead such a progressive and forward-thinking club.”
Forest Green Rovers chairman Dale Vince said: "Hannah was the natural choice for us to be first team interim head coach. She's done a fantastic job leading our academy and is well aligned with the values of the club. It's perhaps telling for the men's game that in making this appointment on merit, we'll break new ground - and Hannah will be the first female head coach in English (men's) football."
Hannah Dingley's Welsh roots and career so far
Dingley grew up in Carmarthenshire and attended a school without a girls' football team so began playing organised football aged 16 before studying a BTEC in football studies at college in Llanelli, a degree in sports science, a master's in sports coaching and then gaining her coaching qualifications up to and including the UEFA Pro Licence.
As for gaining experience, she started out coaching a local village team and worked with a men's U19s team and a local non-league club whole at university in Loughborough.
After graduating, she lectured in sports leadership around coaching on weekends and evenings
“When I left school I did a BTEC in a college in Llanelli,” she previously told i. “I was the only girl on a course full of boys. I did work experience at Swansea City. This was when they were still playing at the Vetch Field, and I worked there all week. I was watching training under the manager, who was Jan Molby at the time, and then came back on a matchday on a Saturday.
"That buzz of walking into the stadium, of how different it was from working the 9am-5pm on a weekday, completely took my breath away. It was in the middle of a housing estate, and you’re walking with all the fans who are waiting to watch their team. I just thought, ‘this is unbelievable. This is what I want to do.’ It got under my skin.”
In 2016, Dingley was working as an academy coach at Burton Albion, working with the U15s team around her job lecturing in sports coaching practice at the University of Wolverhampton. She successfully applied for the head of academy role at Burton when it came up, and three years later was named academy manager at Forest Green Rovers, now making history by becoming the first woman to take charge of an EFL club's first team.
She recently predicted that it would not be long until a woman took charge of a men's professional team, telling the BBC in March that it would "come in sooner than you think".
"The success that the Lionesses are having, that Emma Hayes is having at Chelsea," she said. "There are others, really good female coaches out there who I have more than faith in would be more than capable of coaching at a men's level.
"You've got a responsibility as the first to open the doors for others and to encourage others. You always say if you don't see it, you're probably not going to be it. The fact that I do this I hope it encourages more females to come into coaching, into football, into different roles, I feel a great responsibility to talk about that."
Forest Green have previously demonstrated a desire to steer away from the conventional in their recruitment of head coaches.
In May 2021, Vince told the PA news agency that a female coach working in the Women's Super League had been a standout candidate to become the club's new boss until it emerged her CV had been put forward without her knowledge.
