Grimsby Town chief executive Polly Bancroft was at home with her five-year-old son when the Carabao Cup second-round draw was made.
After a two-and-a-half year stint as Manchester United’s head of women’s football, she was acutely aware of the club’s capacity to wreck best laid plans due to the huge global interest in them.
Bancroft received another reminder on 13 August as her current club and old one were the last two names drawn at this stage of the competition.
Paired together for their first meeting since a 1-1 draw in 1948, interest in the tie at Blundell Park was so high that League Two Grimsby’s website crashed almost immediately.
“We had to put a pause on the website until we regrouped on the Thursday morning,” said Bancroft.
“My phone went crazy. It was a pinch me moment for everyone connected to Grimsby Town.”
She is keen to emphasise the wider impact of a game for which Grimsby could have sold out their 9,000-capacity stadium three times over.
There is a personal element though.
United were late starters as the Women’s Super League began to grow. They entered the WSL fold in 2018 and were promoted to the top flight in their first season.
“When I joined the club, the women’s team was four years old and the men’s was 144,” she reflected.
“Embedding that start-up within the establishment, naturally, had some growing pains.
“It’s the same sport but with different games, different demands and different needs. We knitted it together as well as possible.”
Bancroft lists two FA Cup finals, a third-placed league finish and Champions League qualification among United’s achievements in her time with the Old Trafford club.
United have played in another FA Cup final since and this week start another European quest. Yet the perception remains that the Ineos Group – and minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe – have minimal interest in the women’s side of the club.
“I couldn’t really answer that with a great deal of detail,” said Bancroft.
“They started in February and I left in May, so there was not a great deal of interaction directly.
“At the time they were understanding the landscape, coming to have a look around and meeting some key members of staff.”
If there is a hidden message, it comes through Bancroft’s assessment of the attraction of the Grimsby job. Although, given she now has a much more senior role at a much smaller club, the comparison is not like-for-like.
“The biggest opportunity here at Grimsby was to report directly into the owners and to line manage the head coach, neither of which I had at Manchester United, albeit I did have close working relationships,” she added.
Her time at United does make Bancroft acutely aware of the need to fully integrate Grimsby’s women’s team – who currently play at tier six in the East Midlands Women’s Regional Football League – into the fabric of the club.
“We’ve done a huge amount to make them feel like they belong,” said Bancroft, who attends their games, which have been moved from Clee Fields to Blundell Park on occasion.
“The players have had their names on the backs of their shirts for the first time, we provide transport to away games and they do player appearances with the men’s first team.”
Yet Bancroft’s job at Grimsby is to represent the club as a whole, not just one section of it.
Her interest in a wider role was piqued when she heard then-Grimsby chief executive Debbie Cook speaking at a Women in Football conference in March 2023.
Cook, along with Mansfield chief executive Carolyn Radford, Port Vale chair Carol Shanahan, Bolton chair Sharon Brittan, Leicester chief executive Susan Whelan and West Ham vice-chair Karren Brady, was one of a small group of prominent women running professional clubs.
Bancroft knew what she was getting into when she agreed to replace Cook, who took up a role with the Football League in February 2024.
She said the lack of female chief executives at England’s professional clubs was not something that makes her uncomfortable because “it’s not new to me”.
“I’m reminded of it quite a lot but I don’t think about it much,” added Bancroft.
However, she said it was an issue that needs addressing and hoped to be a positive role model for those who wish to follow.
“The situation is not lost on me,” she said. “More needs to be done, not just in terms of the male-female split, but also ethnic minorities and other inclusion topics to make it more diverse.
“Role models certainly help and maybe some training around bias.
“I hope, genuinely, giving a bit more visibility to the women that are in these roles, with them talking about their pathways, their experiences – and hopefully me being in the room as one of the only females – says to the other people in the boardroom that women can do a good job in these positions.
“And you don’t have to have necessarily been in the men’s game from day one to transition into the men’s game.
“I’ve obviously worked in the women’s game and transitioned into the men’s but still have the women’s team under my remit. People take different paths in their careers. This one’s been mine.
“I don’t think there are any others that have taken that so far, but that’s not to say that they couldn’t do it in the future.”
Bancroft is looking forward to seeing some old faces this week.
She laughs and asks “does that still happen?”, when reminded of the days of the John Beck era at Cambridge and how lower league clubs turned the hot water off in the visiting dressing rooms of heralded top-flight visitors and soaked warm-up balls so they were not fit for use.
United boss Ruben Amorim and his players might find the available facilities at Grimsby to be a bit on the cosy side, though, as they look to avoid a massive upset in a competition that represents one of only two realistic chances of silverware this season.
“It’s obviously a little bit smaller than Old Trafford, so the players and the staff might find it more uncomfortable than they’re used to in the Premier League,” added Bancroft.
“I know our fans will make it as uncomfortable for them as possible.
“But they are professionals and they’ll adapt I’m sure.”