Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A WEAVER OF BIG DREAMS
SIMON WEAVER, English football’s longest-serving professional manager, is sitting in a Barnsley hotel talking about his 12 years in the job.
Still not quite sure where that time has gone, or how he’s done it.
Harrogate Town’s boss, just 43, had no grand designs on management until injury forced his hand.
Taking on a job at a club where there were just SEVEN season-ticket holders, near the bottom of Conference North, is a far cry from the polished outfit that competes today in the top half of League Two.
“I know about the statistic,” he said, “and I’m quite proud of it. But I’m prouder still because we have had a couple of promotions and progressed as a club.
“I want to keep that going. More promotions.
“To be honest, I didn’t have any big plans but I’d just finished playing with Ilkeston. I was the skipper and I’d scored the winner in extra-time and we were promoted.
“I went out that night and picked up the Non-League paper. In it was an advert to be Harrogate Town’s manager. I went home and wrote out an application to the late chairman, Bill Fotherby – one of the game’s great characters.
“I was in Scotland for a wedding on the Friday. I received a call from Bill, asking to meet. I raced back down.
“I convinced him. I told him: ’I need a future in the game. I want this’.
“He said: ‘Right, you’ve got £1,600-a-week. That includes your wages, that of an assistant, a physio and the players. Oh, and by the way, you’ve only two players that we have re-engaged.
“I was so naive and excited that someone wanted me. I thought I might never get another chance. I went back up to the wedding, started making phone calls and that was it.
“It was soon brought home to me what I’d done. I phoned up one of the lads we wanted to keep and told him. He replied, ‘No, I’m off to Halifax’. And he put the phone down.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, welcome to football management’.”
Weaver has had one stroke of good fortune. In the interests of full disclosure, it is only right to point out that his dad, Irving, is the club’s chairman.
His son added: “Look, I’ve been lucky. We have a good relationship. It’s unique.
“You hear some horror stories about the chairman undermining the manager.
“That doesn’t happen at Harrogate Town.
“I’m allowed to be myself and run the football. My dad, Irving, isn’t chasing a dream. He’s a grafter. He’s in the building game. He knows the last thing I’d do is let him down.
“The only time the mask slipped was when we were promoted to the Football League. He got emotional and said, ‘You’ve done it’, but he quickly composed himself and then added, ‘But they came back at us in the second-half, didn’t they?’.”
“I want success for all of us. But particularly for him.”
any ‘I didn’t have I’d big plans but just finished playing at Ilkeston’