THE SAINTS ARE MARCHING ON AND UPWARDS
FOOTBALL can be a fickle game for managers who get few chances to impress in the role. One Cambridgeshire club is bucking that trend. St Ives Town manager Ricky Marheineke recently marked 300 competitive games in charge.
It was a rare moment to celebrate in a year badly disrupted by lockdown which at one point saw the manager and 15 members of his squad in isolation following positive COVID tests.
Marheineke has been in charge for seven seasons after taking over from joint managers Jez Hall and Warren Everdell who themselves stood down after 12 years at the Saints. It means the club has had only two management teams in the last 19 years.
“It’s a remarkable football club,” Marheineke, 39, told The NLP. “I think that speaks volumes that they’re not reactive. I’ve certainly had bad spells during my seven seasons at the club, and the board have always stuck with me.
“It was one of the reasons I was drawn to the club. I knew going in, it was a big transition from Warren and Jez and how they were doing things and it would take time. And I knew that with the way that the chairman was, he would give me that time to do it.”
During his time in charge, Marheineke led the Saints to promotion to Step 3 of the football pyramid for the first time in their history. It came in dramatic fashion in the play-offs in
May 2016. Playing at home in front of 1,500-strong crowd against a formidable AFC Rushden & Diamonds, they won 2-1 in extra time thanks to a winner from homegrown midfielder Ben Seymour-Shove.
Since then, St Ives have looked to consolidate at step 3, narrowly avoiding relegation in 2017/18 before bouncing back to finish 13th the following season in a competitive Southern League Premier Division Central. They topped that with their best ever run in the FA Cup culminating in a trip to York City in the third qualifying round.
While the club may be punching above their weight at Step 3, Marheineke thinks the future is bright. They enjoyed a run in the FA Trophy before Christmas and have ambitious plans to redevelop their Westwood Road home.
“We’ve had so many good memories. The promotion season will obviously stick long in the memory. While we’ve been at Step 3, there have been some really memorable results and the FA Cup run where we went to York City and even this year in the FA Trophy.
“I’m looking forward with the redevelopment of the ground and hopefully in few years’ time being in a position [going from] punching above our weight to actually becoming a sustainable step three club and looking for promotion, rather than being the side that’s fighting relegation every year.”
“With the new facility – and potentially, the income that will bring – we’ll be able to put a better team on the pitch that will win more games than they’ll lose, and fans in the community will get back involved and get behind the team and help us move forward.”
Invested
That redevelopment includes a brand new £500,000 3G pitch due to be installed this summer and which is being funded by two of the club’s directors.
There is a real buzz around the club about the new pitch, which will enable a better standard of football.
It will also help the club to save money by being able to host its various teams on one site rather than spending money to use other pitches in the town.
Marheineke explains: “We are renowned for having a really poor pitch, a factor in players not wanting to come and play for the club, for sure. It’s very difficult to recruit players because they know what our pitch is like.
“So, once we’ve got the 3G, it will certainly help with recruitment. Players want to play on a nice facility, which we will have.
“More importantly, for a club like St Ives, it’s the revenue that it will bring into the club, which not only will it pay for itself over time, but it may well generate further money, sponsorship, etc, which can be invested into the playing squad to help the club move forward on the pitch as well as off of it.”
Longer-term plans include a new clubhouse, changing rooms, classrooms, kitchen and function room.
The interruption to this season has been particularly frustrating after a strong start with three wins and a draw in six league games and that run in the FA Trophy. The Saints were also forced to postpone a number of games due to the COVID outbreak.
“It’s just been a bit of a frustrating season,” said Marheineke. “We were really optimistic with the start that we’d made, that we could have had a good year.”