Eight and a half years ago, Dan McNamara walked onto an Astroturf pitch with seven bibs, three footballs and 58 players. His office was the driver's seat of an old Ford Focus. This week, Wolves Women begin their first fully professional season in WSL2. That is not a fairytale. That is a club doing the work.

We were at Molineux when Wolves lifted that third-tier playoff trophy in May. The noise was real, the emotion was real, and from everything coming out of Compton right now, the ambition behind it is real too.

The Man Who Watched From the Falklands

McNamara's story deserves more airtime than it gets. He coaches Wolves full-time as part of the RAF's elite athlete scheme, which means in 2022, when Wolves won the northern division but lost the playoff decider to Southampton, he was watching from the Falkland Islands. Not the Sky Sports studio. The Falklands.

In 2025, they finished second and were then told the club had not even applied for a promotion licence. That would have broken most people. It did not break McNamara or his squad.

The arrival of new executive chair Nathan Shi changed things. The women's team now have their own changing facilities, a meeting and analysis room, and somewhere to actually sit together. Russ Fraser, a man who spent the past decade working across the WSL at Reading, West Ham, Leicester and Liverpool, has come in as head of women's and girls' football. The infrastructure is there now. The question is what they do with it.

McNamara, speaking from an actual office at the Sir Jack Hayward training ground, put it plainly: "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. It's night and day."

His one-time brush with elite football? The same Everton youth team as Wayne Rooney, where the tactics, by his own telling, amounted to passing it to Wayne and letting him score. Football's funny like that.

Built for WSL2, Not Just Survival

The recruitment this summer has been pointed. Former WSL players including Mel Lawley, Jasmine Matthews, Yana Daniëls and Mel Filis have all come in. England youth goalkeeper Emily Orman has arrived on loan from London City Lionesses. Midfielder Tammi George, who first joined the club aged 13, is part of a core that has grown together through amateur football and now steps into the professional game.

The squad went bouldering in the Lake District as part of pre-season. They toured Wolverhampton, took in the Guru Nanak Satsang Sikh Gurdwara, visited the historic Halls music venue and spent time at Molineux helping youngsters through the club's Premier League Kicks programme. That kind of grounding matters, particularly for a set of players who are representing a city, not just a badge.

McNamara was clear about why the recruitment was done carefully: "We don't want to just be a team that goes up and then straight back down." That is the right attitude. [The WSL has never been bigger or more competitive](/uprise/football/the-wsl-returns-bigger-than-ever-and-with-a-mouthwatering), and [the transfer landscape in women's football tells you exactly how fast the gap between clubs can widen](/uprise/football/wsl-transfer-talking-points-three-things-we-learned-from-the). Wolves know what division they are in.

Their first WSL2 home match is against Sheffield United on Sunday. The professional era starts there.

We think they are ready. Prove us right.