“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 drew 1-1 but it is an evening when the score 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 media requests from international media. “Tonight was a quiet one until a few things happened yesterday,” Perrin says.
Namely the small matter of Dingley taking charge in the dugout, supported by Connor, occurred on Tuesday, after Forest Green sacked Duncan Ferguson. The former Everton striker’s marriage with Forest Green, a vegan club recognised by the UN as carbon-neutral and with plans of building a wooden stadium off the M5, always seemed an odd one and so, in truth, it was never a great shock that things unrivalled. But the significant moment arrived when Forest Green owner, Dale Vince, turned to Dingley, their academy manager of four years, to step up on an interim basis.
Could Dingley be handed the reins on a full-time basis? “I haven’t asked her if she’s going to apply for it,” Vince says. “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 by 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.”
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. I think it is 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.’ I just think it’s a silly thing to say because it’s offensive to Hannah, to the club and to women in football, because she is easily the most qualified person at our club to be the interim head coach. She got the thing on merit in the same way that she got the academy job four years ago. It is just a cheap shot.”
“It would be remiss of me not to welcome Hannah Dingley who is making footballing history tonight,” the stadium announcer tells a crowd of 696 moments before the referee blows for kick-off and a ripple of applause follows. 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.
