Year on year under local boy done good Ian Richards, Penistone Church have consistently raised the bar.
The extremely ambitious former Stocksbridge Park Steels and Bradford (Park Avenue) midfielder has ripped up the history books by taking his hometown club, who were treading water in the Sheffield & Hallamshire Senior League Premier Division ten years ago, beyond their wildest dreams and to the brink of the Northern Premier League.
Penistone are one of several progressive Toolstation NCEL Premier Division clubs with genuine potential to go higher than the NPL – heights thought not possible two years ago, never mind ten.
However, through bumper crowds, work off-the-field to the ground, a second-placed finish in 2019 and a brilliant campaign until last season was halted, expectations are at levels previously unimaginable and Richards is thrilled.
“My view has changed (from April 2018) because the club is matching everything I do on-the-pitch and in some cases they are ahead,” Richards tells Non League Yorkshire.
“From two years ago things have developed positively off-the-pitch which has allowed us to positively progress on-the-pitch. So in 2018 I was thinking maybe NCEL Premier was our ceiling. Now I’m thinking if we can go up, the club can grow again because I think we’ll get even more come to watch and we’ll get even more sponsorship.
“The ambition then is ‘how long can it take us out of the NPL South to get into the NPL Premier Division’? The bar has been raised on-and-off-the-pitch and it is good. I’ve never had any pressure and I have a great relationship with Dave Hampshire and the rest of the club. I’ve always set my own pressure and targets.
“Now at the meetings we’re having, we’re working together and everyone is ambitious as each other and it can only be a good thing for the club and the community. The club has gone from strength from strength since when we spoke in 2018. It has been done in the right way with local sponsorship and local people doing things for their community.
“Our infrastructure as a football club; looking at the juniors, the reserves, the ground, the people on the committee, we’re in a really strong position to go to that next level. Where previously it may have been me driving the ambition and club forward, it is now aligned on-and-off-the-pitch. As a football club it couldn’t be in a better place than it is right now.
“Last season our crowds are excellent and the highest in the league. We were averaging 250 a game and that had increased during the run-in. We’re hoping those people come back and watch within the 300 restriction from September.
“It is really a good place to play your football or manage. We’re building something here at Penistone. We are maybe not doing it at a pace other clubs are, but every season the club gets stronger and better and better.”
2017 was a pivotal year as it put Penistone firmly on the football map. Church stunned the NCEL by winning the Division One play-offs to win promotion in the May of that year. Two weeks later Richards’ men pulled off another shock by beating Bridlington Town in the League Cup at Bramall Lane. The FA Cup upset over Whitby Town later in the year – thanks to Andy Ring’s famous late winner – increased their profile.
Ending the 2017/18 campaign in second place – behind runaway champions Worksop Town – further added a buzz around the club. Going into 2020, the team was all set for promotion, fans were packing the ground and bang, more disappointment.
“Finishing runners-up was hard to take because we were excellent that season because in the previous season three went up,” says Richards.
“It took a team to win 18 games in a row to beat us. Credit to Worksop. A team beat us rather than us throwing away winning the league. You have to accept that.
“What was harder was the summer. Because we had done well and hadn’t gone up, six of our players were taken by clubs at a higher level. We know where we stand as a football club. We are about developing players and improving people and if they want to move on that’s fine. It left a big hole to fill and with three teams going up last season, when I was speaking to players it was really difficult to compete from a financial point of view.
“Rather than using pre-season to prepare us for the first game, we used it as a trial pre-season. We looked at a lot of players and tried to find hidden gems. We did and for example Tom Charlesworth came from that. Cameron Simpson did. Max Dearnley did and one or two others who are still with us did. As the season progressed, those players who had left us returned. Nathan Keightley, Jordan Coduri, Tom Brennan and Kieran Ryan returned which was brilliant as we had a competitive squad.
“I think last season was genuinely going to be our most successful season. We were in the semi-final of the Senior Cup and we were right in the mix for promotion and I felt with our run-in and squad we would have achieved that. Last season was more disappointing than the previous one because it was so unexpected and unprecedented and you couldn’t control it. However, you had to look at the bigger picture and say ‘this is a global pandemic and us not getting promoted is only a small thing’.”
Time has moved on and Penistone and the rest of the NCEL are preparing to hopefully start their league campaign in late September – with a midweek fixture at AFC Mansfield planned as the first league game.
“What it (the disappointment of last season) has done to me and a number of players is give us an extra motivation and the enthusiasm and commitment to come back and put it right this year,” he says.
“If we had gone up last season Andy Ring, Brett Lovell and Ryan Johnson were going to retire or finish playing with us because they had achieved what they wanted to achieve. They’re going to now give it another season.
“We’ve had a few players who have had offers to play higher, but have committed to us because we want to get the club where it should be. You could speak to six or seven managers who will say the same, but it is our ambition to get promoted this season and hopefully we can.”
The 2020/21 season is Richards’ 12th as manager of Penistone. Around the same time as his appointment, a certain Craig Elliott was also taking his first steps with West Yorkshire League Division One side Kellingley Welfare.
Richards has never hidden his desire to manage in the Football League or at least in the top flight of Non League Football, but whereas Boston United manager Elliott has flown up the pyramid to the edge of the National League, the Church boss has stayed loyal to his hometown club.
“I do look at Craig Elliott and think it could have been me,” he says.
“Loyalty can be a positive, but it can be negative. I do want to manage at the same level as Craig Elliott and I feel my track record and history at Penistone proves that I do have the potential to do that.
“I have a really positive relationship with Penistone and I am really committed to this football club for the short and the long term unless there is an opportunity like Craig had at Shaw Lane where he had the potential to really accelerate through the leagues.
“If that kind of opportunity came to me I would consider it. Like-wise if things changed at Penistone and they wanted to go in a different direction, I’m hoping my track record, my success and my age would stand me in good stead to go and manage (somewhere else and) higher.
“Once we (Richards and assistant and brother Duncan) go higher, the aim at whichever club or us personally would be to try and accelerate through the leagues like Craig Elliott has done. I read your article about Craig and it was really interesting to read about how he started in a similar way to how I did below the NCEL.
“He worked his way through and took a calculated gamble to step back two leagues (from NPL Division One with Ossett Town) to take charge of Shaw Lane (in 2014) and it paid off. He’s in a really strong position with Boston and their ambition is to get into the National League. I would like to do similar and if I can do that with Penistone, brilliant. If not, long term you have to look elsewhere.
“But I am fully committed to Penistone, short-term and long-term unless Penistone say otherwise or I get that opportunity like Craig did.”
Richards’ transformative work with Penistone has not gone unnoticed. Many rate him as the top young manager in the NCEL and the one with the brightest future. Maybe Wayne Benn and Craig Parry are only examples of Yorkshire-based managers who have taken their old clubs to previously unthinkable places in the last ten years.
Both had very open relationships with their clubs, who knew if a major and right opportunity was presented to them they would take it. Benn left Hemsworth Miners Welfare for Ossett United late last year, while Parry quit for Pontefract Collieries for Worksop Town in April – two clubs with huge fan-bases.
The same relationship exists between Richards and Penistone’s hierarchy. He is not super-glued to the Church home dugout for life and he has come close to leaving in the last few years.
“It has to be the right club for me to leave,” he says.
“I’ve had offers from three clubs who are higher league or higher profile. The first two offers were when we did the double (in 2017) and people said I should have taken one of them. I just felt I owed it to Penistone and we had unfinished business. When we finished runners-up I had another offer and because we finished runners-up I felt we could go up in the following season (2019/20).
“In hindsight they weren’t the right clubs and it was the right decision each time not to go. Two of the three have different owners now and the other one is doing well and I know the manager, but at the time it wasn’t quite right for my circumstances because we had a one-year-old and we were expecting another child.
“That’s why I don’t have any regrets. You can only look in the moment and I’m from Penistone and the club means a lot to me. I’m a teacher and vice-principal at Penistone Grammar School and I have two boys, three and one. I have to make sure everything fits in with my own personal circumstances.
“But I don’t want potential chairman to look and say ‘oh he’ll never leave Penistone’. I would leave Penistone, but everything has to be right for me, Penistone Church and the people at the club if I do leave.”
If the perfect club does not come along, Penistone officials and supporters have the comfort of knowing Richards will attempt to take their club to the heights he wants to manage at.
Dare we say Penistone in the National North?
“It is not out of the realms of fantasy, but we won’t try to do by throwing all our money into our budget, we never have done,” he says.
“I always work within the restraints I have, but I still think if we go up sponsorship will increase, crowds will increase and my budget will increase in line with that. If we can go up again the sponsorship and the attendances will increase and then we can look up again.
“Because I have the luxury of knowing I am in a secure position I always give ourselves three years to get out of each league and I would say if went up ‘three years and let’s get out of this league’.
“That allows you to get better on-the-pitch, but also off it. There’s no reason why we don’t be ambitious and say ‘six years’ time, let’s be knocking on the door of that National North’.”
National North may sound crazy, but some may have said in 2010, ‘Penistone Church in the Northern Premier League in 2021, don’t be stupid’. They’re not saying it now.
If you have enjoyed this interview, please consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page.
There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
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 so now 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.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
We have enjoyed great success over the past three years. Several of our players have represented Mencap GB in Geneva, including Billy Hobson from Selby and Greg Smith, whose story is quite inspiring.
Like most organisations, we have been affected financially by the Coronavirus and we have incurred losses which we cannot recover. We have not been hit as badly as other organisations, but we do need raise £2000 to put us back at the level we were at in mid-March and enable us to make a difference once again to our players’ lives in the future, without having financial worries. Several of our players are suffering from effects of the lockdown and we are determined to be in the strongest position possible to provide services for them.
Any amount raised above £2000 will be put towards new projects (when the world returns to normal) designed to further benefit people with disabilities and learning difficulties. You can learn more about the organisation HERE and on our Facebook page.
Watch the video below to see highlights from our three years as an organisation. The video was produced for our players at the end of March to remind them of good memories from the last three years.