“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.
