Football coaches often like to talk about their individual “journey” towards the dugout but few have followed a route as richly scenic as the long and winding pathway taken by Tanya Oxtoby.

The distance between the 36-year-old’s home town of Wickham in Western Australia and her current posting is 8,592 miles and, along the way, Bristol City’s manager has regularly enjoyed branching off to explore some life-enhancing diversions.

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There were the years devoted to earning a psychology degree and, later, working full-time as a government psychologist specialising in mental health for young people and Indigenous Australians; the seasons spent serving Perth Glory as the first Indigenous woman to captain a W-League team; and the time gobbled up by juggling the running of her own sports coaching and mentoring business with technical area duties.

“Our budget here at Bristol is five times smaller than those of some Women’s Super League clubs but I hope my background in psychology can help bridge the gap – I feel I’ve got a massive asset up my sleeve,” says Oxtoby whose side entertain Liverpool on Saturday. “Psychology’s a massive part of football, especially when teams are under pressure. My background’s made me very conscious of players’ body language and the way I communicate with them.”

She is grateful for the insight and perspective offered by a taste of life outside the game’s hermetically sealed bubble. “Studying psychology and playing was difficult,” she says. “It took five years to complete my degree instead of three. But I’m so pleased I was persuaded into doing it, pushed into something different.”

Although the WSL is fully professional, wages often remain low and careers can be short. Accordingly Oxtoby, who combines managing Bristol with running her own business, urges a young squad not to abandon part-time studies. “I’m massive on the importance of having dual careers,” she says. “I encourage the players to keep studying, to go out and get another skill set.”

On the pitch, a side who, under Willie Kirk, finished a modest eighth last term had everyone taking note after early season draws with Chelsea and Manchester City and a win against Brighton. That run was sufficient to make Oxtoby the first female recipient of the League Managers Association manager of the month award.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tanya Oxtoby was the first W-League captain from an Indigenous Australian background. Photograph: Kieran McManus for The FA/Rex/Shutterstock

“It was a surprise and very much the players’ achievement,” she says. “But it was also good for the WSL; we don’t want too much of a gap between the top sides and the rest.”

Perhaps Australian coaches can bridge the chasm City and Chelsea had been threatening to create? After all, her compatriot Joe Montemurro holds the latest LMA WSL award after leading resurgent Arsenal to top spot.

“We must be the solution,” jokes the daughter of an Indigenous Australian father and English mother who grew up 977 miles north of Perth in a remote iron ore mining outpost. “Wickham was real smalltown Australia, we didn’t even have a video store! But, as a child, I enjoyed incredible freedom.”

Few of those who saw Oxtoby, then coached by her father, practising ball skills in Wickham envisaged her ultimately breaching the barriers involved in becoming a rare player of Indigenous heritage to star in the W-League.

“I was told I’d never be able to play at that level, that I’d never be anywhere near good enough,” recalls the former defender who, eventually, swapped Perth Glory for a contract with Doncaster Belles. “So now I’m proud to be a positive role model for young Aboriginals. I still go back, talk to them and try to give them a positive story. It’s important to show that, with hard work, they, too, can make it.”

After a youth largely spent outdoors, with a warm beach invariably close by, forging a new life in England was initially even tougher than “adjusting to all the rules and restrictions” which confronted her after she was dispatched to boarding school as a teenager.

“I still miss the Australian sun every day,” Oxtoby says. “But Bristol and the people here are great; I’m really enjoying it. I’ve adjusted to the dull skies and cool temperatures and got some warm clothes! But my first 12 months in England were very hard.”

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If overcoming such culture shock proved testing, her coaching career has been punctuated by challenge. Embracing professional psychology and assorted women’s football roles, it eventually took her to Birmingham, where last season she served as Marc Skinner’s assistant.

Suitably impressed, Bristol offered Oxtoby a frontline debut last summer. “Other coaches had more experience,” she says. “But they obviously saw something in me.”

So far at least, the WSL’s first psychologist-turned-manager looks an inspired choice.