From staying up late to watch Match of the Day as a child, the coach has faced many obstacles on her journey to historic role
There is a reason Forest Green Rovers’ home, in Nailsworth, a market town in the Cotswolds, is on Another Way. The League Two club do things differently, whether wearing kits made of bamboo and coffee grounds, having a bee hive on the roof of their main stand to encourage pollination or travelling by zero-emissions vehicles. They even use away fans’ urine to fertilise their organic pitch. But on Wednesday evening they took another unprecedented step, as Hannah Dingley took caretaker charge of their first pre-season friendly, becoming the first woman to lead a professional English men’s team and, inadvertently, a trailblazer for countless girls and women.
“I am the first and it’s great but I don’t want to be the first and the only,” Dingley said afterwards. A groundbreaking night, but it is still far from a level playing field. But Dingley, who became the first female academy manager in men’s football with Forest Green in 2019, has long known that. As a child her gender meant she was unable to play the game she loved for a team for about five years.
