PAUL HECKINGBOTTOM
Chris Dunlavy profiles the career of the Barnsley boss
SHEFFIELD Wednesday had just clinched promotion to the Championship and were attempting to navigate out of Cardiff when Paul Heckingbottom seized the play-off trophy, popped open the fire exit and jumped on to a gridlocked M4.
“I was drunk by that time but I still remember it,” laughed Owls skipper Lee Bullen, who spent the aftermath of Wednesday’s 4-2 triumph over Hartlepool in 2005 sharing cans of lager with ‘Hecky’ in the Millennium Stadium dressing room.
“It was absolutely choc-ablock on the motorway and Heck opened the fire exit on the bus and started dancing the conga down the middle of the motorway, through a line of stationary cars, with the cup!”
The defender was eventually discovered 100 yards down the road, still clutching the trophy, doling out beers in the back of a fan’s car.
It is a tale often told at Hillsborough, and one that epitomises Heckingbottom’s approach to the game.
For the Barnsley boss, football was always about having fun. The money, the trophies, the security – none of that meant anything unless he was enjoying himself on the pitch.
“Footballers these days always get criticised for being greedy and chasing the money,” he told The FLP earlier this year.
“But I was the complete opposite. I walked away from contracts and cash I was owed just because I wanted to play. I made stupid decisions in a financial sense.
“Now I’ve got a family, kids, responsibilities.
“I’m trying to earn a living. I do look back and wish I’d been more ruthless, but it’s just how I was. If I wasn’t enjoying it, what was the point?”
Origins
The upshot was ten transfers, eight clubs and a nomadic pro career that was ended by injury at the relatively young age of 31.
Yet, if Heckingbottom’s career would prove less than glamorous, its origins certainly were.
Born in Barnsley, he was spotted by Manchester United scouts and handed his football education by legendary youth coach Eric Harrison. Though the fabled Class of ’92 were two years his senior, Phil Neville, Terry Cooke and Oxford manager Michael Appleton were friends and peers. All those three were offered contracts, but Heckingbottom was not. Luckily for him, Sunderland coach Bryan ‘Pop’ Robson had been monitoring United youth matches and took a punt. Though his stay at Roker failed to yield an appearance, it was not unproductive. Reserve team games against hard-as-nails old pros like Kevin Ball toughened the young left-back. So, too, did loan spells at Hartlepool, Scarborough and Darlington. Indeed, these early experiences would inform his entire outlook. “I realised that I got more of a buzz playing ‘real’ football on loan at Darlington than I ever did training with superstars at United,” he said. “I never forgot that feeling.” So began the journey – to Third Division Darlo, a brief stint at Norwich, a season at crisis-hit Bradford culminating in both relegation and a player of the year award.
“He was great to play alongside,” said team-mate Mark Bower. “Pretty much like he is now: very calm, very levelheaded, but with that steel in him as well.
“If somebody needed to be tackled or smashed, he’d go and do it. but he played the game with a cool head.”
Next came successive playoff victories, first with Wednesday in 2005, then Barnsley, the club Heckingbottom had watched with his grandfather as a boy.
Admission
By then, however, his legs were all but shot.
Tendonitis, hamstring problems, an issue with blood flow. The player who returned to Bradford was not the one who left three years earlier.
Nor was he the “class act” David Holdsworth announced he’d signed for Mansfield in 2009.
By his own admission, Heckingbottom should have quit long before he did. The enjoyment he lived for had leeched away, replaced by pain and frustration.
“People ask if I miss playing,” he said. “And the truth is I don’t. It had become so much of a chore by the end.”
Bower always saw Heckingbottom becoming a coach. “He had that calm authority about him and you could tell he had good knowledge of the game,” he added.
Yet there was no easy ‘in’, no reputation to fall back on. He enrolled on a sports coaching degree at Leeds Beckett University, then begged a job as academy director at Pontefract Collieries in the Northern Counties EastLeague.
Impressed by his work with 16-18 year-olds, Barnsley offered a post as development coach. A picture soon emerged of a man loved by his scholars and devoted to his craft.
“Paul was my coach as I was coming up through the ranks,” said Mason Holgate, the 20-year-old defender who joined Everton for £2m in 2015.
“He is a great coach and, if you want the time to work on things, he will help you. There were times when he stayed with me for hours after training, showing me clips, and working on things.
“I still ring him now and speak to him about certain things. He’s been a great help to me.”
And those sentiments have been expressed ever since he was promoted to fill the void left by Lee Johnson in February – a void he filled with a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy and promotion to the Championship.
“Paul has been fantastic,” said defender Marc Roberts after May’s play-off final triumph over Millwall.
“He’s a great coach and a great man. He followed the previous gaffer and took to it brilliantly. Nobody here has got a bad word to say about him.”