The soccer wolf in a sheepskin coat

Alan Hardy with his award from the Manchester FA for his contribution to football

Martyn meets... Alan Hardy, the Latics (and Mossley) legend.
TAKE a walk down the Hilton Arcade in Oldham town centre the next time you are up town.

There is a pictorial history of Oldham through the ages and one of the most endearing images is of Alan Hardy in a sheepskin coat. He is a grinning cheeky-chimp of a man, the epitome of 1970s chic.

That was then and now is now and Alan is at home in Delph, still full of life and a burning ambition but laid low by illness which has determined that his lifetime of service to Oldham Athletic is at an end.

Well, sort of. The face of the Latics for a generation has been forced by circumstances — prostate cancer, love of his wife and family and a determination to get well which overwhelms and drowns bloodymindedness - to take early retirement.

He officially finishes on March 14, three months into a six-month sicknote - but there is no way he’ll walk away from Boundary Park, or football. He is already on call and has already been back into the office to help out his replacement Neil Joy, the Latics’ new chief executive.

Alan is 61 and nowhere near ready to retire, let alone walk away from a lifetime steeped in football.

This is a love, a lifetime relationship, that can be traced 51 years to his first day as a ball boy at Mossley FC’s Seel Park — a goal kick from his junior school at St Joseph’s RC which broods over the Market Street end of the cute, tidy little stadium nestling in top Mossley.

Barely weeks into his early, medically-advised retirement, he has also received two offers — albeit consultative roles with Manchester County FA and the Football League — from people eager to harness his 46 years of experience.

“I will do something, there is no question of that,” he told me with that unequivocal steely glint that has been a part of the Hardy psyche for the 46 years I have known this remarkable man.

I was a cub reporter at the Reporter Group of Newspapers, based in Ashton when Alan joined the staff as an office junior, recruited by office manager Eric Dyson.

Eric was (and still is at 81), a Stalybridge Celtic supporter and whether the young Hardy was recruited because of his football connections as the youngest ever committee member of Mossley FC, the Cheshire County League rivals from just up the road, we shall never know.

Save to say he started in gainful employment, marking up the paper, measuring the size of advertisements and ensuring all the information — “including when an advertisement was missed out” he recalled with mock horror — a job he held for two years.

Promotion followed for this precocious young man, who was never destined to follow in the ever-cautious Eric’s footsteps. He moved into the promotions department of the newspaper group which, in those days had 14 titles and a weekly circulation just shy of 94,000, where his singular talents where put to better use.

Still heavily involved with football, he had succeeded Jim Wharmby as secretary at Mossley and, with an eye to the future, left the newspaper industry and took a job in sales with Tetley’s, selling loose tea and teabags: “It was a more money basically, it was a good job too.”

But football was always in his blood and when Mossley – a powerful side in the 1970s, winning titles and appearing at Wembley in 1980 in the FA Trophy Final - came a’calling with the offer of a full-time job, it was hard to resist.

By now Alan had met, harried and married Viv, his lifetime partner, supporter and best friend, who had a good job with Williams and Glyn’s Bank.

“When Alan was offered a job full time at Seel Park I was able to cover our mortgage so he did it,” recalled Viv, words spoken with a cheery acceptance that he would probably have taken the job anyway.

It helped that Viv was also a fan of the Lilywhites — as a 16-year-old she and her friend used to sneak along and watch the players training. When Alan came to chat her up they found they had much in common.

Four years after the met they married and after a short honeymoon in the Lake District — “we had to come back for a match” sighed Viv — they started life together restoring a small house in Derby Street off Staley Road.

“There was no bathroom or indoor toilet, so we set about the restoration,” remembered Viv.

The “we” was a generous nod in Alan’s direction for, like much of their marriage, he wasn’t around all that much due to his football commitments. Latics’ chairman Harry Wilde had called him and Alan walked away from Mossley — which at the time was taking in £100,000 a year on scratch cards, a phenomenal amount of cash for a semi-professional club — to take over as lottery manager at Boundary Park. Ostensibly he was also assisting commercial manager Mike Twiss, who had joined from Southampton. “But Mike’s wife couldn’t settle in the north and six months later had gone home and I was the commercial manager.”

Happy days, happy years, teasing money out of the Oldham public and the business scene while working with Joe Royle, who joined the club in the early 80s.

The glory days of the roller coaster ride into the old First Division and becoming founder members of the FA Premiership — now the Barclays Premier League — were almost a decade away as Alan learned his trade.

When the then chairman, Ian Stott, decided to relinquish his dual role as chief executive, Alan was invited to take over and a new career unfolded.

And all the while Viv was at home, raising their children Nick, who still lives in Greenacres, and their daughter Samantha, who still lives in Mossley.

Sitting at home in Delph, overlooking the moors and watching England lose at cricket in the searing hat of Dubai, Alan was wistful.

Yes, he has regrets - because of his football marriage, not seeing his family grow to adulthood, not sharing Viv’s joy of their growing pains and birthdays.

And now, at a time when the man who endured the mountainous joys football success and the dispiriting lows of failure, should be enjoying the fruits of those labours, he has been laid low.

Prostate cancer has cut short his career. Surgery, radiotherapy, hormone treatment, bone scans, endless hours at the Christie hospital in Manchester and the new Christie’s at Oldham have failed to fully eradicate the odious disease,

Yet he remains chirpy, ebullient, insistent and optimistic to a degree that left me wondering why I had ever raised the subject in the first place.

“The PSA levels in my blood suggest there is still something there, but we haven’t found it yet.’

Note the “yet”: Alan has little doubt the experts will trace the rogue cells that are skewing his recovery.

Once this little matter has been cleared up he will resume his football career - albeit part-time in his consultative roles, always with an eye on the results of the Latics and the Lilywhites.

That’s a while away yet, though. First, rest and recovery.

He and Viv will attend games and functions and dinners in the arms of the football family that has embraced all their life together.

And Alan will make up for lost time, watching tenderly as his grandson Jack, a bundle of joy who radiates through the life of Viv and Alan like a glorious sun rising every day. And this time Alan, the man of the football, he of the sheepskin coat, will take time to enjoy the joy of Jack.

This time there will no regrets.