Dan McNamara has committed his future to Wolves, fronting a new and exciting era for the women’s first-team and pathway programme.
McNamara has led the women’s first-team as head coach since 2018, turning full-time last summer, and now, after taking Wolves Women’s push for promotion to the final day last term, has confirmed he will be leading the team for the 2025/26 campaign.
Work has been underway on both new contracts for last season’s key personnel and fresh signings, and McNamara says a number of factors made him believe the club is ready for the next step, leaving him excited ahead of the 2025/26 season.
“Everybody knows Wolves is a huge part of my life and has been for a long time now,” McNamara said. “Now, after a difficult end to the season, and a tough summer, it's brilliant to finally commit to the season ahead and focus on trying to do what we've longed to do over the last few years and get promoted.
“I’ve never wanted to leave Wolves. From where we took it to where it is now is night and day, and I'm really proud of that journey and of the people that have been a part of it. Now we look to that next phase, and we've got a great platform to build on now and hopefully excel into what should be a really exciting year or two for the football club.
“The staff, the group that we've put together, they're unbelievable people, and that's why we always get the results, and we're always in and amongst it. The core group made it really difficult for you to ever think about turning your back on it. I've always wanted to win this league and see Wolves in the WSL2, and to do it with this group would mean everything to me.
“With more opportunities potentially next year, I see this as a real key 12 months, and if we can keep those key players and add a couple over the summer, I think we've got a real chance to achieve a dream and build on everything that people have worked hard to put in place before us.”
A restructure to the top tier of women’s football – the Women’s Super League [WSL] – means there could be an additional promotion place on offer for the third tier next season.
McNamara is aware of the opportunity ahead and has been reassured by the club that his side will be in the best possible condition to achieve promotion.
“The message was a really exciting one. I think lessons were learned over the summer. It was a really difficult period. The girls have met with the hierarchy and different things have been discussed. There's been a lot of positives – an increase in budget and accessibility to Compton. Putting some of those things in motion is really going to help us drive forward.
“That showed me that the ambition was still there. That ambition has been shown over the last few weeks, which has excited me and made me want to lead this group forward and we'll be doing everything to take it on to the next level. The players deserve it, the fans deserve it, the whole club deserves to be in the WSL2. We've constantly missed out, so we want to make sure we're getting over the line, we're desperate to do it now, and hopefully this can be the year.”
In October Tammi George, Katie Johnson and Anna Morphet made history by becoming the first women's players to earn contracts with the Old Gold, and they helped form the core of a group which lost just one league game all last season.
Now McNamara’s future is secured, full focus is on both retaining his biggest assets and adding in areas he believes need strengthening ahead of the new campaign.
“I've constantly been in talks with the players over the summer. Now hopefully with the commitment from myself we’ll start to get some of those big players commit to the season ahead. They seem to be excited and they seem to be motivated. We’ll be the underdogs again heading into the new season, Burnley are going into the season with all the pressure, but we're confident we can stick together as a group, put some additions in there and hopefully cause them some problems.
“Every time we get somebody in, they always say about the fact we don't have a high turnover of players. It's often a mystery to people on the outside as to why some of the best players within the National League aren't attracted to big offers from other football clubs, and that's credit to the environment we’ve created at Wolves – people want to be here because they want to represent the football club, and we work as a close knit group.
“So, trying to get the right people to come in and buy into that has always been my mantra when I'm trying to recruit players. Hopefully we can do that over the next few weeks, get some of the right players in. The girls understand me and understand what it means to play for the football club, they're the important ones. We've got to get them over the line, and hopefully they'll draw in the new players because everyone wants to play with the best players in the league.”
Since receiving an upward promotion to the third tier in the summer of 2021, Wolves have finished top, only to lose in the promotion play-off to Southampton, runners up twice and fourth, displaying a consistency in their promotion challenges.
In August, a fresh National League challenge will begin, and McNamara insists his group’s attitude and application will not change.
“The play-off will add an air of excitement towards the back end, but we won't be aiming for second, we've proved this year that it doesn't matter what budgets are on offer or how many full-time teams are in the league, this group is hungry enough and good enough to compete with the very best. To take Forest to the last game was success this year, but next year, we want to see if we can go one further.
“I'm looking forward to it now. We've had a couple of weeks away on holiday, trying to reset. But I love football, and I love Wolves, I love the football club. We want to win, and I want players who believe that we can win, because ultimately the end goal is to get promoted.”
