The trouble is that the history of women managing men in football is as fraught as it is sparse. That incorrigible breed who suspect that every promotion of a female into a position of power must be born of questionable motives took succour from the controversy over Donna Powell, linked in 2009 to the manager’s job at Fisher Athletic, a club then flailing around in the lower reaches of the Blue Square South. But it turned out that Powell, an abundantly qualified coach in her own right, was being offered the role only as a cruel gimmick. She would, she learnt, preside over just a single game in exchange for winning a charity auction. “I knew that if I had asked to be manager straight off, I wouldn’t have been taken seriously, because I am a girl,” she said.