League’s new boysHarrogate have right attitude .. down to a tea
HOME are the history boys of Harrogate Town, the club who reached for the spas and landed in the Football League.
After three games as Doncaster Rovers’ tenants, while their 3G plastic pitch was replaced with grass, Sulphurites captain Josh Falkingham can’t wait to christen the CNG Stadium at Wetherby Road as a league ground today.
Any club that gets its nickname from the periodic table must have an intrinsic chemistry, but Harrogate’s band of brothers aren’t here for an experiment.
Chairman Irving Weaver’s son, Simon, is the manager, but who needs nepotism when you keep winning football matches?
And for Falkingham, released by boyhood club Leeds United as a teenager, a homecoming party with no supporters may not be what he dreamed of when Harrogate trumped Notts County in the National League play-off final in August.
But at 30, he has learned to count his blessings, like oneyear-old daughter Penelope and a cuppa from the town’s spiritual home, Bettys Tea Rooms.
Big pictures have had a bad press this week after Premier League ogres tried to camouflage a power grab as charity.
Among the special brews, spa treatments and excitement of Harrogate’s promising start in League Two, however, Falkingham still recognises the monuments of national crisis.
Bang in the middle of town, the Harrogate Convention Centre is on standby as a Nightingale hospital to cope with the pandemic.
And Falkingham m remembers how close Harrogate’s gate’s dreams came to ashes when hen ambitions were at the mercy of administrators wanting to null and void the 2019-20 season as if seven months of endeavour had never happened.
“We were on the edge through lockdown – on the cusp of our dreams coming true but not knowing if we would get the chance to make them happen,” he said.
“Anxiety levels were going through the roof, and winning at Wembley to get over the line will live with us forever.
“Of course we would have liked the fans to be there, and of course we wish they could be there to see us walk out for our first game as a Football League club at our home ground.
“But we need to keep the bigger picture in mind.
“It could easily have been taken away from us – there were leagues around the world being declared null and void.”
We need to keep the bigger picture in mind - it could all have been taken away from us
These are dangerous times – we have to look after everyone’s health first. Football is secondary
Falkingham has not lost sight of the dangerous times we’re living in, with the Nightingale hospital being prepared.
“If Covid cases continue to rise, and we need to open it up, we are going to have to look after e v er y one’s health first – football and everything else is secondary,” he said. “I’m sure the fans are gutted to miss out on these moments of history, and the players are desperate to share them. “But our place in history is secure, and with everything else that’s going on around us at the moment, we can’t be too demanding. “We’ve got to continue living in the real world.” Weaver’s high- tempo, dynamic approach has made an immediate impact, trouncing Southend at the seaside on the first day of term, and Monday night’s 1-0 victory at Bradford City was another impressive statement of intent.
Now for today’s homecoming party, as they welcome fellow league newcomers Barrow, with no guests but a new carpet.
Falkingham said: “I hear the changing rooms have been extended, but we won’t know what it looks like until we report for the game on Saturday. The big question will be how the newly-laid pitch will play, and it will feel like coming home from a long break to find out what the decorators have been doing in your living room while you were away.
“I’m sure it will be fine: we played on grass at Wembley in the play-off final, and that turned out all right.”