WHING & A PRAYER
Andy man can deliver for Moors
IT’S sofa, so good for Andy Whing as he plots a seat at football’s big table.
The Solihull Moors’ boss lugged around settees for a living before a full-time gig at the National League club cropped up.
And now he’s sitting pretty with the cushion of two Wembley appearances in one week to fall back upon.
Success in either – tomorrow’s play-off final or the FA Trophy showpiece – will enable the likeable 39-year-old to say he’s created a lasting legacy for himself and the club.
He said: “I was hung up on retiring early from the game. I had nothing and then Covid struck.
“I was delivering medication to people’s homes, working for a mate delivering sofas and in the warehouse, sending them out every day.
“I only stopped two days before I came in here, full-time.
“I met the chairman Darryl Eales, who I knew from Oxford, for a coffee and two days later I went to the Belfry to meet Stephen Ward, who is director of football, dressed in my warehouse rags. He must have been looking at me thinking: ‘What’s the chairman done here?’”
Turns out, what Eales had pulled was something of a master-stroke.
The former banker had kept his eye on Whing’s progress at Banbury United, where promotion to the National League North was secured by 23 points.
Back-to-back appearances in the FA Cup first round – including a televised tie against Barrow
– enabled the
Puritans to build a new stand.
When Neal
Ardley left Moors
11 months ago, having taken the ambitious club from the suburbs of
Birmingham to the play-off final two years ago, Eales knew where to turn.
Not that Whing was in full agreement. “At my first fans’ forum, I was asked what my goals were for the season – mine was not to be sacked by Christmas,” he said.
Before retiring from playing, Whing was known for scoring the last goal at Coventry City’s Highfield Road stadium (inset).
He said: “My football career was boring – I didn’t have any promotions, no play-offs, no relegations either.
“But since I’ve been in management, we won the league by 20 points, reached the FA Cup first round with Banbury United for the first time in 50 years. And now this. “I’ve been in one fairy tale.
“For everyone from the chairman down to the players at Solihull Moors, it would be lovely to be involved in another.”