West Yorkshire League Premier Division side Ilkley Town are another Step 6 club in waiting.
This club is almost oven-ready for the jump into Non League Football and if 2021 is their year, it would be an culmination of several years of work.
“When I started (with the club) seven years ago, we were on a grass pitch with nothing other than goals and probably a handful of people watching,” first team manager Simon Armstrong tells Non League Yorkshire.
“Now we’re on a 3G pitch with all the nice facilities and all the improvements and we’re getting around 50 and 70 for home games.”
However, Ilkley’s incredible story should not be centred on their rise from obscurity of Division One in the West Yorkshire League to the brink of either the NCEL or North West Counties. Because the area is best known for its beautiful moorland countryside, the presence of Ilkley at Step 6 will bring joy to the ground-hopping fraternity. But the club aren’t there to fulfil the needs of day-trippers.
Kick-started by the installation of their £376,613 Football Foundation and Premier League and FA Facilities Fund funded 3G pitch in 2018, Ilkley’s journey has provided a much-needed asset for their community and football and social opportunities for the many, not the few. Promotion to Step 6, you could argue, is a minor detail in the vision for the future.
“2016, 2017 is when we started talking about ‘can we get into the West Yorkshire Prem, can we then try and get a semi-professional team in Ilkley’? When you start asking those questions you start looking at the facilities you need and the investment you need,” says Armstrong.
“From there it went towards a 3G pitch because it would be more cost effective and it creates a revenue stream for the football club which then can invested in further facilities. It helps the sustainability aspect.
“We have gone from a team hiring a pitch to trying to be the hub for the community. That’s what we have tried to achieve and we want to be a beacon for health and wellbeing. That’s kind of the ethos of what we’re trying to have and the main driver.
“We want to be that mainstay for the local community, not just football, but like the Walk On scheme and one-or-two projects that we could do in the future where we could really drive health and wellbeing in the community.
“The club is conscious of that and that they need to grow the spectator side. The Walk On scheme has been launched and its about encouraging people to meet in Ilkley and then walk down to the game with members of the football club and get a tea or coffee and then watch the game. They obviously walk back again. It has been trialled a couple of times and it worked well and I think it is something that once we get out of the pandemic that could grow quite quickly.
“Through the winter it (the 3G pitch) is absolutely choca. A lot of parents visit and there’s a lot of usage. It has been a game-changer, but what the local people in the area would say is that we were crying out for it (the 3G pitch).”
Armstrong, in his second stint as manager, has been a major figure during the club’s radical transformation of their Ben Rhydding Sports Club home, but it is not all about him.
“The guy who has to take most of the credit has to be the club chairman Richard Giles,” he says.
“He’s been the main driver and he’s really pushed it on and made it happen. He’s very motivated to keep pushing it on.”
Armstrong is more than a football manager. Football almost fills his head 24/7. “My wife would say so yes. I think I was called obsessed,” he says.
The former Skegness Town and Boston United player was the club’s part-time facility manager, but he is now head of football and he will be managing the boys and girls full-time Football and Education scholarship programme run in partnership with St Mary’s Academy in Menston.
He works alongside Sam Dexter, Ilkley’s assistant manager and full-time football development officer, another key person who is driving up the community usage of the facility.
“The 3G has made a huge difference because that’s huge revenue generator that we can reinvest,” Armstrong says.
“But it is not a case of we’re just collecting and hoarding money. We have a full-time football development officer (Sam Dexter) who we employed two years ago and who is doing a really strong job with our elite academy, our holiday courses and is looking at working with schools and looking to put on tournaments.
“That’s so we can look to generate more revenue so we can keep sustainable as we move forward. He’s done a really good job and the caveat for him was ‘this is what we’re going to pay you’, but you have to make that and then some every year. That role has to pay for itself.
“That role in essence is self-sustainable and brings further finance into the football club that we can reinvest in facilities and projects so we can really start to be that community hub.”
Ilkley had hoped to be starting life in Step 6 this month. They were second in the West Yorkshire League Premier Division when the season was chucked out of the window and all results wiped.
They believed their ground was ready and would be signed by ground grading inspectors. Instead they face at least one more campaign in the WYL with an ever-improving facility.
“Two years ago we got the 3G pitch installed and it is obviously a Champions League standard surface with a spectator barrier,” Armstrong says.
“We have enclosed the ground even further as we have put a barrier around it to block the view (from outside) so it looks more like an enclosed stadium. We have covered standing area which is now in place along with the floodlights.
“We have just refurbished the changing rooms which are now next to the pitch and we have a new player walkway and access to the pitch which fits the Step 6 profile.
“We have a pay booth which is ready and in place. We’ve also put planning permission in for a hospitality suite / coaches area and for a seated stand which will have around 300 seats. That’s all in the pipeline. There’s still some bits to do, but we’re well on the way.”
With the new season looming, the club have clearly done their bit. The rest is now down to the players.
Ilkley, who will face a huge battle with sides like Beeston St Anthony’s, Carlton Athletic, Field, Hunslet Club lurking, need to finish in the top five to be considered by the FA for Step 6 in 2021 – provided the season does actually finish – and Armstrong backs his men.
“Yeah we have a group that is good enough to make that step up,” he says.
“I’m confident in the group and I think they’re confident in themselves, but I’d argue that there is four or five clubs in our league that are able to make that step up and have a group of players strong enough to make that step up.
“It signifies how strong the West Yorkshire League is which is great. I think we’re ready for it and I think we were ready for it last year. The challenge is can we finish top five and make sure we’re in the right position and place to be accepted.
“We’ve been building for a few years with the aspiration of going into Step 6 and we have players who want to test themselves at that next level.
“I think we have a number of players who could have gone and done it before now, but they want to do it with this group and the club, their friends if you like and the guys they have got this far with.
“I think from that perspective we are ready for that step up, but we have got to deserve it as well and we have to prove it this season. It is a project we have been on working as a group for five or six years to get the right characters and players into the football club.
“We have done that by being really attractive in regard the way we play, the facilities, the aspirations and ambition of the club itself and we have a really strong group. We can always be stronger and we’re always looking to improve if we can, but it is a group that is ready for the next step.”
A big question is where Ilkley could be in ten years? The club has grown at a frantic pace in just three or four years with the 3G pitch and they’re set to install a 300-seat stand. That’s more than 100% more seats than some NCEL Division One clubs have currently so it is an example of Ilkley thinking far into the future.
“Myself and the chairman converse all the time and talk about where we want to go and I’d never put a destination on it,” Armstrong says.
“I’d never say ‘we’re going to get there in that amount of time’. There’s so many things that can change and there’s so many parameters involved. If in a year’s time we are at Step 6, it would be a massive reward to everyone who has worked so hard to get us there, but it is crucial to say that is a case of if we do get there, that’s it and we’re happy.
“I don’t think we would be. The worst thing you can do as a football manager or a team or club is be content. As soon as you’re content with what you’ve got, that’s when you start to stagnate and start to find difficulty and you struggle.
“I think from our perspective, Step 6 is the next step, but it is case of then; where can we go on-and-off-the-pitch to push the bar higher? It will be a massive challenge, for sure, but everyone is bang up for it.”
Ilkley kick off their Premier Division campaign by hosting Huddersfield Amateur on Saturday. Possibly the start of a magical season…
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NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams. As we slowly return to ‘action’, our work will play an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
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