Russ Eagle expects a few tears will be shed as Handsworth officially return ‘home’ to Olivers’ Mount tonight.
Handsworth host Athersley Rec – eight years since the last time the club’s first team played there after their demotion for failing ground grading regulations which led to the merger with Worksop Parramore and exile at Sandy Lane.
The last time Handsworth’s first team played at Olivers’ Mount was the 1-0 defeat to Craig Elliott’s Glasshoughton Welfare in April 2012 – the season the Ambers won the NCEL Division One title and President’s Cup.
Eagle, who returned to Handsworth last year, was the manager that night too and he is overjoyed for everyone at the club.
“It will absolutely be an emotional night for us all,” Eagle told Non League Yorkshire.
“It is eight years since the first team played a competitive game at Olivers and it was obviously the double-winning team which I managed who were the last one to play there.
“When I left (in 2012), (chairman) John Ward said to me ‘I promise that at some stage I will get you back here with the first team’. I said to him last week ‘I have held you to that and I came back last season because you said that where we were going to be going forward’.
“I went down on Monday and I stood on the halfway line and I went ‘if I can this job right in the next four or five seasons then this club will back to where it was all those years ago’.
“We’ve had that little void which would have obviously been our time to grow as a club. We’ve had to miss that. Now we start again and I know I will be the proudest person in the stadium tomorrow (tonight) to be part of it and to be allowed to be part of it after all this time.
“Tomorrow (Tonight) night is a culmination of everything that this club, John, Steve (Holmes), all the trustees have done. When you come and see a chairman putting the roof on, hanging doors and see a vice-chairman raking the pitch, cutting grass or doing whatever they need to along with six or eight trustees you know you have to do your job properly for them.
“It is going to be a class night. We could have exceeded the 300 people limit from just people from the club with managers, parents and kids who wanted to come. Obviously we have to go steady with what’s going on in the world, but the ones who get in will be happy because we are back and we don’t have to make that trip to Worksop anymore.”
The 3G pitch, laid last year, was the first phase of the club’s return to Olivers’ Mount. The important part was the new changing room complex which is almost finished and is situated behind one of the main pitch goals.
“Everything (with the changing rooms) was set to be started in March, but then with lockdown everything has been put back and back,” he said.
“We are at a stage where the building is watertight. It has all its rooms. It has ceilings inside, but there’s still a lot to do with water and electric. So everything is temporary at the moment.
“Fair credit to the Northern Counties for allowing us to carry on with it during the season. It is habitable enough so everyone will get changed in the changing rooms at the top where both teams can have four changing rooms between them.
“At half-time we can use the new changing rooms and at full-time we can use the top changing rooms.”
Eagle’s array of talents do not just to extend managing football clubs as alongside many others he has worked around the clock to help the club get their changing rooms and ground almost ready. He’s even roped the first team squad in.
“We’ve made a classroom in the existing changing rooms for Sheffield United to use,” he said.
“We’ve done all sorts of painting and maintenance on the ground. The lads have helped lay the concrete for the ticket office. I’ve not only had them running up and down the field, I’ve made them carry buckets of cement.
“I’ve been bricklaying myself. I’ve just pulled up now at the ground as I’ve been working this morning and I’ve got some finishing touches to do and a couple of barriers to erect. If I can get away for ten or eleven o’clock tonight, then it is onto the game tomorrow.”
Eagle did have put down his building tools and tactics board recently as a bout of ill-health forced him to take two weeks off. The good news for referees he is back and leading Handsworth from the technical area.
His absence meant his two ‘dugout youngsters’, assistant Joe Thornton and coach Aiden Spowage, had to take control of the ignition keys for the FA Cup tie at Maltby Main and Eagle is full of admiration for them.
“They deserve an unbelievable amount of praise, especially young Aiden,” he said.
“He was with me last season and he’s a young lad who is learning his trade. He’s coaching at scholarship level with Sheffield United’s community programme and we all know Joe and what he can bring.
“He brings massive amounts of experience and camaraderie. If it hadn’t been for them, especially in the last three weeks when I haven’t been on my game, things could have run felled.
“It hasn’t because they have held it together and they’ve done a cracking job. Joe found he was going to be managing on Monday evening when I was admitted to hospital.
“So Joe and Aiden got a text from me saying ‘listen, you’re going to have to step up and take it for the next few weeks because I ain’t going to be there unfortunately. There’s your job, get on with it’.
“They didn’t get off to the best of starts though and I do keep reminding them by the way!”
Handsworth narrowly lost at Maltby on September 1st and they also suffered a 3-1 loss at highly-fancied Liversedge in the FA Vase. These two preambles to the season have been mixed in various pre-season friendlies.
How would Eagle describe their form?
“Good, but very indifferent as well,” he said.
“The thing we have got at the moment is the experienced lads I have brought in such as your Rikki Paylor’s, Andy Gascoigne, Steve Wankiewicz and Kyle Jordan are obviously settling in because they’re helping the other 16/17 young lads and getting to grips with them and learning their strengths.
“We are a good work in progress at the moment and I’m not going to be one who says ‘I need all this time’. I want to win on Wednesday night, I want to win on Saturday and I want to win next Tuesday.
“There will be none of this ‘we’re bedding in’. If the lads who are picked for Wednesday aren’t good enough then they’ll change for Saturday when we go to Grimsby Borough. That’s how it will be. Everyone had a free last year, but there’s no free years this year.”
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, 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. 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 because of the cancelled Lucille Rollinson Memorial Tournament, we are down on projected income for the year and we have incurred losses in the last few months.
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.