Howard’s way is working for Town

Mark ‘Tank’ Howard

AMATEUR FOOTBALL: AS manager of Royton Town in the Premier Division of the FBT Manchester League, Mark ‘Tank’ Howard doesn’t know what it means to be second best.

Thirty-nine-year-old Howard made his managerial mark in the Manchester League, guiding Hollinwood to promotion from Division One in his first season, before securing a Manchester Challenge Trophy

success and a sixth-placed finish in the top flight.

Turning his back on open-age football for a season, Howard oversaw an incredibly successful season at under-18s level when his North Chadderton side won everything in sight and remained unbeaten.

Howard succeeded Phil Haigh in the Town hot seat towards the end of last season, when relegation from the top flight looked likely.

But the determined Howard – at one time the youngest manager in the Oldham Sunday League at 22 with Hare and Hounds – set about turning things round and the threat of the drop subsided.

And what a turnaround in Town’s fortunes this season! Two eye-catching away performances in the last few weeks – a win against reigning champions Hindsford followed by an emphatic 5-0 drubbing of highly-placed Wythenshawe Amateurs – have turned heads. Town are now third in the table.

Tomorrow’s mouth-watering clash against similarly improving Springhead at the Oldham Academy North has all the hallmarks of one of the biggest matches of the season.

Howard said: “We’ve got a settled side now and each and every player knows exactly what they have to do and what each of their team-mates is going to do.

“There is no secret to my managerial style and I know which players respond to a rollicking and those who need an arm round their shoulder. It’s about talking to people the right way, and making it clear to them what is expected.

“We go into tomorrow’s match unbeaten in seven and we have no injury worries but I hold Andy Revill and Lee McAllister (Springhead’s managerial team) in high regard.

“I know them very well and, like us, they like to get the ball down and play.”

Town go into tomorrow’s derby clash with the league’s 20-goal top scorer Michael Moss in their ranks, together with Billy Dempsey, who is on course to claim the league’s prestigious player-of-the-season award with eight votes to his name so far.

It should be a cracker.