‘To see professional footballers here is incredible’: Wolves Women hit the big time

Suddenly the bustling classroom at the back of the Guru Nanak Satsang Sikh Gurdwara falls almost silent and all eyes are on Dan McNamara. The Wolves head coach, experiencing a wrestling lesson, is engaged in a tense tussle. He twists, panting and heaving, eventually ends up on top of his opponent, and the room erupts. Compared with some of the challenges McNamara and Wolves have grappled with during his eight and a half years coaching the team, this exercise was child’s play.Wolves, promoted to Women’s Super League Two in May, are visiting the gurdwara – which became Wolverhampton’s first in 1966 – as part of an afternoon city tour which has also included a trip to the historic The Halls music venue and a walk in the centre, as some of their new signings acquaint themselves with the area before the club’s first season as a fully professional women’s team, and their first WSL2 home match, against Sheffield United, on Sunday.The Wolves head coach, Dan McNamara, in his new office at the Sir Jack Haywood training ground. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The GuardianVictory against Plymouth in the third-tier promotion playoff was the culmination of years of hard graft in the amateur game, and McNamara pauses for reflection as he chats from his office overlooking the Sir Jack Hayward training ground in Compton.“Initially, I think my ‘office’ was me sitting in the driver’s seat of an old Ford Focus,” he says. “I first walked on to an Astroturf with about seven bibs, three footballs and 58 players and probably thought: ‘What the hell have I done?’ Now I’m in my own office. We’ve got a fantastic setup here, we’ve got our own spaces for the women, changing facilities, which have been added over the summer. It’s night and day.The Wolves captain, Anna Morphet, leads players during a session at the Sir Jack Haywood training ground. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian“Everybody grows up and dreams of being a professional footballer. I was no different. My claim to fame was I was in the same youth team as Wayne Rooney for a few years at Everton – our tactics were: ‘Pass the ball to Wayne and he will score.’ And [when I left Everton] I probably fell out of love with the game for a little bit. To be here now working professionally in football is a dream come true.“People always talk about what success looks like. And I think: ‘Leave the place in a better place than what you got it.’ I don’t think anyone could argue that we’re going to leave this place in a better place than when we first picked it up. It’s not been me; the girls have gone on the pitch and they’ve achieved it. But to have inputted a small bit into making dreams come true gets me quite emotional.”The Wolves squad are put through their paces at the Sir Jack Haywood training ground. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The GuardianPromotion was a long time coming for Wolves, who won tier three’s northern division in 2022 but – with only one team promoted then – lost the playoff decider against the southern champions, Southampton. McNamara missed that because he was overseas with the Royal Air Force, and watched from the Falkland Islands. Since 2024, he has coached Wolves full-time as part of the RAF’s elite athlete scheme – “they have extended me for an additional year to continue at WSL2; hopefully I can do them proud and represent the air force in a good way over the next 12 months,” he says – and his team lost two league games across the next two seasons.In 2025, they finished second but were heartbroken to find the club had not applied for a licence for promotion. A year later, with a new executive chair in Nathan Shi, the club’s approach to the women’s team has changed, and McNamara’s team have cabins at the training ground as private changing areas, a meeting/analysis room and places to relax together. Some of the squad engage in a tense round of the card game Dobble after having breakfast together, before heading out for training. Further new training pitches will follow soon.The England youth international goalkeeper Emily Orman has arrived on loan from London City Lionesses. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The GuardianThis summer the club also hired a new head of women’s and girls football, Russ Fraser, who worked in the WSL at Reading, West Ham, Leicester and Liverpool over the past decade, before a spell with Al-Qadsiah in Saudi Arabia. Many of last season’s squad left their day jobs and turned professional but there has also been a big recruitment drive. Signings include former WSL players such as Mel Lawley, Jasmine Matthews, Yana Daniëls and Mel Filis.“We don’t want to just be a team that goes up and then straight back down, so the work was almost immediately after the playoff,” McNamara says. “It’s been non-stop since. We were quite careful at what we went after. We wanted to bring in the right technical players, but also players that represent this great club and the city. And that’s hard work, ethics, having the right morals on the pitch, being quite energetic.”Another new signing the England youth goalkeeper Emily Orman, on loan from London City Lionesses, enjoyed taking part in the wrestling demonstration. “I’ve never wrestled before,” she says. “That was really tough. I got a real bead on doing that!” It is not the squad’s only team-building experience. They also went bouldering in the Lake District, and the midfielder Tammi George – who first joined Wolves aged 13, before a spell at Sunday’s opponents – says: “That brought the group together so much because people were put through difficult situations and needed an arm around them at times. Everybody really saw the benefit.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Wolves squad take a walking tour through the city. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The GuardianOn the city walk the players learn about everything from the AD910 battle of Tettenhall to the origins of the Prince Albert statue, and are informed of the iconic sets played by bands such as Queen and Nirvana at The Halls. There is also an important stop at Molineux, first so the players can help out at a session run by the club’s foundation during the school holidays for youngsters, through Premier League Kicks, in partnership with West Midlands police. The squad play pool and help with arts and crafts before touring the club’s museum, where the women’s football writer and Wolves fan Tony Leighton has written the latest part of an exhibition charting the women’s team’s rise.The Wolves players Mel Lawley (left) and Chloe Williams play table football with attendees during a summer youth club organised by the Wolves Foundation at Molineux. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The GuardianThe former BBC WM presenter Jenny Wilkes has been the chair of Wolves Women since 1999 and is full of pride. She knows how much the efforts of volunteers have helped the club. “I remember Rachael Heyhoe Flint, who had been such an amazing support for us in the days when it literally was one woman and a dog watching the game and she was one woman who brought her dog and walked her dog around the pitch,” she says. “We’re come a long way since then.“It’s incredible, being fully professional, which we never thought we’d manage to do. In the long history of the club, we have played in the top flight before but it was when the top flight wasn’t professional. Now to see professional footballers at Wolves Women for the first time really is incredible.”The squad take part in wrestling at Wolverhampton Wrestling Club. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The GuardianThe captain, Anna Morphet, who handed in her notice for her day job as a physio a week after Wolves’ promotion, says: “We used to collect the kit out the back of Macca’s car boot. Those 90 minutes [against Plymouth] were the opportunity to change our lives. The work that’s gone on over the summer and in pre-season has been immense and I think now it’s about believing that we are ready for this level.”Wolves opened with a defeat, albeit a respectable one, 2-0 at one of the favourites for promotion, Newcastle. Fraser says: “Wherever we finish in the league, I want other teams to go: ‘Wow, Wolves were so much better than I thought they were,’ because I think a lot of teams will probably think: ‘Oh, Wolves have just come up, they’ll go straight back down.’ I think we’re better than that. I think we’ve got a good group here.”