Mick O’Connell believes Harrogate Railway can benefit hugely from Harrogate Town’s promotion to the Football League.
Railway’s near neighbours will be playing in League Two this season and O’Connell expects the quality of players across all ranks at Town will shoot up and reckons that can be only a good thing for his club.
“It (Town’s promotion) is absolutely brilliant and with Leeds getting promoted and Harrogate Town going into the Football League, I think the area is thriving at the minute,” O’Connell told Non League Yorkshire.
“It has brought a lot of positivity to the area and you could say that for the vast wide area. I think we can all benefit from it. I think Harrogate going into the Football League will attract better players to Harrogate, not just in the first team, but the u23s or u21s as well. The majority of the players they get are ex-academy players, players who have been in the system and have had proper coaching since they were eight-years-old.
“They will be decent players who lack a little bit of experience in open-aged football and hopefully we can give them that. Now we have strong links with them, there is a strong possibility that our player pool will get better because they will want these young lads to get minutes.
“Hopefully we will be the first door they come and knock on. We’ve worked hard to build up relationships with Harrogate Town. Josh (Walsh) who is my assistant works at Harrogate Town. Dave Riley runs the youth set-up has helped us out with some players so we do have that strong link there.
“Harrogate Town can trust us with their players and they know their players are in good hands and they can play games. They’re not just going to come in and sit on the bench. We will give them the minutes they need to play.”
The relationship between the two clubs is the strongest it has been since Billy Miller and assistant Lee Ashforth forged an alliance with Simon Weaver seven years ago.
It led to players such as Peter Crook, Rob Youhill, Matt Heath, Alex Metcalfe and Harry Coates joining to gain either minutes or experience at different intervals over a two-year period – to great effect as Railway secured their highest ever finish in 2015 with their eighth-placed position in the NPL Division One North table.
Ashforth continued the link when he succeeded Miller, but slowly over the last three years the relationship weakened until O’Connell took charge earlier this year. It is now back to full strength and several players are already on the books at both clubs, including goalkeeper Joe Wilton.
“I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t know why that link disappeared,” he said.
“As soon as I got the job, setting the link up was the first thing I wanted to do. Harrogate Town have made great strides in the last six, eight, ten years and we need to latch onto the back of that and almost let them tow us along.
“It can be good for them in terms of getting players out of loan and getting minutes. We have also had messages from Harrogate Town fans who have said they will come and support Railway when Town are playing too far down south and they can’t get to the game.
“The closer we can get, the better for all parties.”
Town’s under 23s side, managed by the club’s captain Josh Falkingham, will face Railway at Station View on Thursday night in the George Smith Memorial Trophy.
O’Connell hopes the game is watched by a large crowd – within the current guidelines.
“It is an annual cup game and our strength and conditioning coach (Ryan Smith), it is in memory of his granddad and it is going to be a good test,” he said.
“I hope we get a good turnout and a lot of the Harrogate Town fans do come down and support us a local club.
“Every Non League club at the minute needs people to come and support them and spend some money. It is a massive opportunity to raise some funds. I know attendance figures (at Non League games across the country) have gone up so it would be great if we can get near the capacity limit of 300.”
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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 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.
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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.
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weird – I remember them when they were on a par and great rivals. Now this sounds like Railway are setting themselves up as Town’s feeder club, a bit like Castillon in spain, who are Real Madrids reserves, playing a couple of divs down.