Forest Green Rovers Shut Women's Team, Ex-Captain Says Game 'Not Valued'

A Decision That Speaks Volumes

Forest Green Rovers have closed their women's team. Former captain Hattie Jones says the move sends a clear message: female football is not valued.

The decision, made by a club that has spent years branding itself as progressive and forward-thinking, has drawn sharp criticism from players and observers alike. Jones, who wore the armband and led the squad through its competitive years, did not mince words when addressing what the closure means for the women who gave their time, bodies, and ambition to the club.

"It sends a message that women are not valued. That's what it feels like, and that's what people will take from it." — Hattie Jones, former Forest Green Rovers Women captain

The club, based in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, has not publicly elaborated on the specific reasons behind the decision. But the silence itself has become part of the story.

The Club That Branded Itself Different

Forest Green Rovers are no ordinary lower-league football club. Under owner Dale Vince, the club has cultivated a global reputation as the world's greenest football team. They play at The New Lawn, a stadium powered by renewable energy. The matchday menu is vegan. The kit has been made from bamboo and recycled plastic. FIFA recognized them as the first carbon-neutral football club on the planet.

The branding has been extraordinary. From CNN features to UN awards, Forest Green Rovers became a case study in how a small English club could punch far above its weight through identity and values.

Which is precisely why the closure of the women's team stings so badly. A club that built its entire identity on doing things the right way, on moral leadership, on being better than the establishment, has made a decision that looks, at best, contradictory. At worst, it looks like the women's side was always a peripheral project, one that could be quietly discarded when it became inconvenient.

The optics are brutal.

A Broader Pattern Taking Shape

Forest Green's decision does not exist in a vacuum. Across English football, the relationship between men's clubs and their women's counterparts remains uneven, complicated, and frequently disappointing.

The Women's Super League has never been bigger. Attendances are rising. Broadcast deals have improved. The Lionesses' Euro 2022 triumph on home soil generated a tidal wave of enthusiasm that transformed the public perception of women's football almost overnight. England's run to the 2023 World Cup final reinforced the momentum.

But beneath the headline numbers, the infrastructure tells a different story. Many clubs outside the WSL and the FA Women's Championship still treat their women's teams as afterthoughts. Training facilities are shared or substandard. Budgets are threadbare. Staffing is minimal. And when the financial pressure mounts, the women's programme is almost always the first line item on the chopping block.

Forest Green are not the first club to fold a women's team. They will not be the last. But the hypocrisy of their brand makes this one land differently. A club that lectures the football world about values has just demonstrated where women's football sits in its own hierarchy of priorities.

What Jones and Her Teammates Lost

The human cost of these decisions is easy to overlook from the outside. For players like Hattie Jones, the women's team was not a side project or a branding exercise. It was years of training, of travelling to away matches, of building a squad identity, of dreaming about progression through the pyramid.

When a club folds a women's team, those players do not simply slide into another setup. The women's football pyramid in England, while growing, is still fragile. Player pathways are limited. Opportunities for competitive football outside the top two tiers are scarce, and many talented players find themselves without a club, without a pathway, and without the support structure they had invested in.

Jones's public criticism is notable because players at this level rarely have a platform. There is no press conference, no mixed zone, no post-match broadcast interview for a former captain of a lower-league women's side. She has used her voice anyway, and her words carry the weight of lived experience.

"We gave everything to that club. Every session, every match. And then it's just gone." — Hattie Jones

The language matters here. Jones did not say the club made a tough financial decision. She said it sent a message that women are not valued. That framing is deliberate, and it reflects a frustration that goes far beyond one club in Gloucestershire.

The Hypocrisy Problem

Dale Vince has been one of English football's most outspoken owners on issues of sustainability, ethics, and progressive values. He has taken positions on climate change, veganism, and corporate responsibility that have earned him admirers far beyond the football world.

The closure of the women's team invites a simple question: Were those values conditional?

Clubs that genuinely value equality do not fold their women's teams. They invest in them, even when it is difficult. Even when the finances are tight. Even when there is no immediate return. That is what values cost. That is the difference between branding and belief.

Forest Green's men's team, meanwhile, continues to operate. The club's eco-stadium plans continue. The vegan catering continues. The global marketing machine continues. Only the women's programme has been deemed expendable.

For a club that has asked the football world to hold itself to a higher standard, the failure to meet that standard internally is a significant reputational blow.

What It Means

This closure is more than one club's administrative decision. It is a stress test for every organisation that has attached progressive branding to women's football without committing to the structural investment the game requires.

Women's football in England is at a crossroads. The elite level is thriving, but the grassroots and lower-league ecosystem remains dangerously exposed. Clubs can talk about equality. They can post about it on social media. They can wear it on their sleeves. But the test is what happens when the budget gets tight and hard choices need to be made.

Hattie Jones has forced a conversation that Forest Green Rovers clearly hoped to avoid. Her words will resonate beyond Nailsworth, because every women's player at every lower-league club in England knows that what happened at Forest Green could happen to them.

The women's game deserves better than being a disposable line item in a club's progressive portfolio. It deserves permanence, investment, and respect. Forest Green Rovers had every opportunity to demonstrate that. They chose not to.

That is the message. And Jones is right: it speaks loudly.