Doncaster Rovers Belles hit reset button again with historic women's football team trying a new model
For decades, the name of Doncaster Rovers Belles was one that shone as bright as any during a time when women’s football was forced to keep its light hidden under a bushel. Yet when the women’s game was finally allowed to emerge from the darkness, the Belles were forgotten about, unceremoniously dumped from the top flight in 2014 to be replaced by Manchester City, a microcosm of the new economics of women’s football.
Down they tumbled, crashing into the fourth tier. Last season, the latest attempt to resuscitate them fell flat, and but for a restructure of the leagues by the Football Association, they would have found themselves relegated to the fifth tier.
Just days after they thought they had been demoted they were handed a reprieve, a chance to reset.
But they have been here before. A little over a year ago, a former men’s professional footballer in Ciaran Toner came in as manager and saved them from relegation. With a new plan to build around youth, and Toner’s professional standards, the platform had been laid. But something didn’t quite fit, last season started badly and never picked up. Toner left with three games to go, Belles five points from safety.
“I couldn’t fault Ciaran for any part of it,” says Chris Wood, the Belles chief executive.
“He was very driven, he was pushing players to be very driven. One of our fans said it best at recent forum, when he said Ciaran would be a brilliant manager at tier three or Championship level.
“And I agree. He was a pro-licenced coach and we were blessed to have him, just for some reason it didn’t fit here.”
So Belles turned to Amanda Greenslade – who had been Toner’s assistant, but crucially head of the youth team and technical director during seven years at the club – to pilot them through to the end of the season.
“It was a really difficult time to take over and there’s only so much you can do in three games,” says Greenslade, “so it was definitely just let’s see what we can do in those final few games and not make too many waves.”
Greenslade couldn’t pull off a miracle but showed enough in that short spell to convince Wood and the hierarchy that she was the person to activate the next phase of their redevelopment on the pitch as well as off it.
“Ciaran is unbelievable,” says Greenslade, who is part-time in the role while working in football during the day. “One of the best coaches I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, a great person. But this is football, you can have the best people in the best places and sometimes it doesn’t work. If everyone knew what the perfect recipe was we’d all be replicating it, but that’s football and that’s why we love it. It’s such an unknown.”
So now to try and tackle that great unknown. Wood believes the club aimed too high a year ago and when things started to go south, panicked too quickly and reacted badly. This year he is not putting too much pressure on.
“We’ve done a lot of reflection over the past year,” he said from Rotherham United’s old Millmoor ground where they will play for the next two seasons at least.
“We’ve looked at squad make-up, instead of building short-term we’ve tried to build long-term, we’ve got some players that can contribute right now and some players that can contribute in the future.
“We’re developing those players over a longer period of time, hoping they’re better when they’re 18 than having to throw them in when they’re 16.
“We believe we’ve got a squad this season whereby a mid-table finish for us would be comfortable. We can reassure people that we’ve put things in place to avoid it being a relegation scrap this season. The culture that was fostered was one of pressure, and one of it has to be high-performance, if there wasn’t a result there was always a knee-jerk reaction to it. Whereas now we’ve got an environment where we’re thinking longer-term and one bad result isn’t worth throwing everything out over. Let’s build and use this as a stepping stone season.”
Less pressure on Greenslade then, but in a position she has long coveted in a game she has served for 30 years, she is under no illusions.
“Let’s be honest, nobody walks onto a football pitch to lose a game, everybody wants to win,” she says of the challenge of FA Women’s National League Division One North.
“But we do need to get it right, the philosophy has to be right. We need to build the foundations, and get everything right off the pitch, a lot of which we did last season, so it’s in effect the second phase of that. We don’t want to be a flash in the pan, let’s throw a lot of money at it to try and see what happens.
“There was a lot of money spent last season for mid-table finishes. There’s not the depth of players out there, nor the deep pockets of wealth, so you have to look at it with a slightly different model.”
Belles were fortunate that the majority of the players who were effectively ‘relegated’ last season wanted to stick around to put it right in 2025/26. They have been supplemented by a couple of new faces and eight girls who have come from the youth team. Greenslade points to the example of Bristol City as one that shows success in the women’s game doesn’t have to revolve around deep pockets.
“Bristol City worked with a lot of young players, small budgets and won the Championship (2022-23) by doing things a little differently and a bit more innovatively,” she says. “Let’s try to build for the future, while still trying to put our best team out there.”
To help results on the pitch, Greenslade has been tweaking the culture off it.
“Having been involved in the female game for a long time it’s how we get the players to interact with each other, how we get them to interact with the staff, with the fans, with the youth set-up,” says Greenslade. “The test will be how that unfolds over the next six, nine months, to see how successful that has been.”
Founded in 1969, Rovers Belles were English champions twice and FA Cup winners six times. But a famous name finds itself hitting the reset button again.
*Belles begin their FA Women’s National League Division One North campaign with the first of what will be three Yorkshire derbies to start the season.
Amanda Greenslade’s Belles travel to Huddersfield Town’s Stafflex Arena on Sunday for the big kick-off.
Two days later they travel to Hull City, one division up in the Northern Premier Division in the group stage of the women’s National League Cup.
Then on Sunday, August 24, it’s a first home game at their new temporary home of Millmoor against York City. “It’s a tough start to the season,” said Greenslade.
“Opening game against Huddersfield is going to be challenging but there’s no easy games in our league, that’s where the league has gone to.
“Every team in that league has the chance to beat every other, people have kept themselves quiet over pre-season, we’re not sure how teams are going to look or how they’re going to set-up.
“So opening weekend is going to be just as exciting for everybody.
“Huddersfield and then Hull so a busy first week.
“The girls are buzzing to get the season started but we’re very measured that the first week of the season doesn’t define us, it’s just the start point. It’s what we do over the course of the next 22, 24 weeks of the season.
“Sunday’s game is not the be all and end all, of course we want to be competitive, but if we lose it’s not the end of the world. Do the best we can with where we’re at.”