Central Midlands League
Ryan Hindley says he has walked into his dream job at Retford United and he has set his sights on guiding them back up the pyramid.
Retford have gone through a traumatic fall from grace – falling from Step 3 to 7 – since the days when Hindley was terrorising defences for them in the NPL Premier Division during the glory-laden Peter Duffield era back in the late 2000s.
The club is now on sound financial footings thanks to chairman Nik Springthorpe and Hindley says Retford are ambitious.
“I think we have to look to get up this season,” Hindley told Non League Yorkshire.
“As I said to the chairman, when I played at Retford we were getting 500 or 600 at every game.
“We were playing Fleetwood, Boston, King’s Lynn.
“Retford have been terribly managed in the boardroom in past years.
“I didn’t get paid for six months and we won the (old NPL Division One South) league by 13 points (in 2008), a total which is phenomenal at that level.
“But we couldn’t go up because the ground didn’t pass its grading.
“We won the league again the following season (in 2009) for good measure and we got promoted.
“They have been badly managed off-the-field but managed brilliantly on-the-field by managers like Peter Duffield and co.
“Now we have a really good chairman who is keen for success.
“I think in five years we’d like to be in-and-around the NPL Division One East.
“We would like to get Retford back to where they belong.
“Every person says ‘I want to get this sleeping giant up’ but the fact is Retford were the biggest club around at one point.
“We were fourth and heading for the Conference North at one point (during the 2009/10 season) and within a decade we’re in the Central Midlands League, it is crazy.
“We now have the right boardroom, a wonderful volunteer base and i’m signalling with our signings that I want to take the league by the scruff of its neck.”
Hindley’s managerial career has taken in spells with Hallam, Worksop Town and Rossington Main.
He has also had a brief spell joint managing Hallam with Steve Whitehead in 2020.
The ex-Ilkeston Town favourite has always taken difficult jobs.
His first foray was at Hallam in 2014 when he inherited a team which had zero points after ten games.
He turned them into promotion contenders.
Hindley’s triumphant return to Worksop as manager in 2017 quickly turned into a nightmare as the club were going through a spell of financial instability.
Not one to take easy roles, he comfortably steered Rossington to safety in 2019 after taking over a side that had collected four points from their opening seven matches.
Hindley wanted to manage again but has bided his time as he wasn’t prepared to take a role which would require fire-fighting.
“You don’t know how much you miss it until it is gone,” he said.
“It is great to be back and although I did get heavily into golf, I did miss it.
“You can be desperate in Non League and I had a lot of opportunities but they weren’t right for me.
“I literally played my first round of golf two years ago today and when I came out of football I went straight into golf.
“I’m playing off 11 at the minute which is phenomenal in two years so you can see that my addictive personality has taken me down the golf route.
“The time is right (to get back into football) and it is the right club as it has a great squad and is financially secure.
“I wasn’t going to work for these chairmen who think they are playing Championship Manager.
“I wasn’t going to work at clubs where they have no established player base and somebody has left.
“The only way I would come back into the game is at a club which is secure.
“The squad that Liam (Kay) had built was already very good hence why they got to two cup finals and finished second in the league.
“It is finally nice to have a stable home rather than ‘Ryan, can you do this, can you bring this, we’ve no senior players, no fans, no money’. I wasn’t going to do that.
“This club has settled finances, has a good fanbase, has good players and we can just kick on.
“If you meet Nick and Sarah who were work tirelessly at Retford you realise there is a game-plan and a chairman who wants success, knows how to get it and just needs the product on-the-field.”