SIMON’S WEAVING HIS MAGIC AGAIN!
SIMON WEAVER wants Harrogate Town to grow into a big club in the National League as they continue to punch above their weight on the pitch.
The long-standing boss has Town in early top seven contention again after being beaten in last season’s play-off eliminators in their first year in NonLeague’s top-flight.
Harrogate are now unbeaten in their last seven games following a mixed start to the campaign when good performances weren’t producing results.
“The first week we drew with Solihull and won at Barrow,” Weaver told The
NLP. “Then we had a few unfortunate games where we were not getting the rub of the green or results.
“There’s been a few ingredients for the perfect storm and it undeniably shook up the lads confidence for a couple of weeks.
“At the same time, you’re flipping a bit because you’re not getting the points we thought we deserved. But you can’t cry about it, you’ve just got to steady the ship and hold your nerve, just keep doing the same things.
“We’ve focused a lot on the things we can control because probably we were losing games by things out of our control.” The run has included impressive wins at leaders FC Halifax Town and last weekend at Yeovil Town to move them up to eighth. “Two have probably been our worst performances, at Wrexham and Maidenhead,” added Weaver, who has been attracting some interFootball est from League clubs. “But because we didn’t end up losing them, we’re still unbeaten so you take a positive.
“As a manager you think, ‘flipping heck we were poor there’ but then we bounce back with wins at Yeovil and Halifax.
“Last season we didn’t get a win against the top six or seven but this year we’ve beaten Barrow away, Yeovil and Halifax.
“No-one is getting carried away. You can quickly have a bad couple of weeks and you’re back down there, it’s such a tight league.”
Ambitious
Also on the agenda this season for Weaver – and his father and chairman Irving – is continuing to grow the club off the pitch among the local community.
Average crowds at Wetherby Road topped 1,500 last season but so far this year they’ve only just scraped over 1,000.
Weaver, for one, knows there’s plenty of work to be done.
“We have an important meeting on Monday night entitled ‘Growing the Crowd’,” he said. “We’ve got to be open to any idea and opinion and be more attractive to people, more awareness to people who might not know about us in the local area.
“We’re ambitious and we’re trying to do it in a way which makes business sense at the club. We’re trying to build a legacy and what you don’t want to do is suddenly get ahead of yourself as a team and lose that sense of identity.
“We need to build the base up so that we’re not such a surprise package. It’s that bigger club mentality, that’s what I’m striving for.”