NEIL YOUNG is talking titles, and although his third successive success that has taken Chester FC into the Conference Premier is freshest in his mind, it’s the first that still gives him an awkward feeling in his stomach.
Two years ago, little more than 12 months after Chester City were wound up, the fans’ phoenix club went to Garforth needing just a point to seal the Evo-Stik Northern Premier Division One North championship.
Second-placed Skelmersdale needed a three-point and eight-goal swing, but they were up against an already-relegated Ossett Albion side who had conceded 123 goals.
With his team losing 2-1 and Skem 7-2 up, Young took himself into the away dressing room as the final whistle approached to phone a friend at the other match, where two more Skem goals would have swung it their way.
Making a judgment call from afar on how that game would go, he went back out and told his players to hold on to a 2-1 defeat – which they did – and stood in the middle of the Wheatley Park pitch listening to his pal’s commentary on the six minutes of injury-time back in Lancashire, delaying the good news to the 2,300 fans surrounding him.
Apprenticeship
“Compared to that, the last two have been a cakewalk,” says Young, whose side won the NPL Premier title by 17 points last term, and who secured the Blue Square Bet North silverware with three weeks to spare with last Saturday’s 1-0 win over Boston at the Deva Stadium.
“Every time I think of that day now it still makes me feel a little bit sick because who knows, if that hadn’t happened, we might not be where we are now.”
Where they are now is back at the level at which the old club perished during the 2009-10 season. There were 3,685 at last week’s clincher, and no doubt many more than just the 460 who attended City’s final game against Ebbsfleet on February 6, 2010 had tears of joy streaming down their faces.
“I don’t think they can quite believe how quickly we’ve done it,” says Young, who at the age of 38, has come a long way in a short space of time himself.
Celebration time: Young revels in his first success as Chester boss back in 2011.
A promising junior career never made it past Tranmere Under-18s, where he played sweeper behind best friend and current assistant, the former Rovers and Nottingham Forest player Gary Jones. By the age of 23, a dislocated shoulder called time on playing days with Conwy United, Droylsden, Poulton Victoria and Cammell Laird.
Young moved into management, first of all running the all-conquering Wirral Sunday morning side he’d played for from the age of 16, Queen’s Park,and then to the West Cheshire League with Poulton before he was offered the job as assistant-manager at Welsh Premier Rhyl.
“I always set out my stall from managing on Sundays that when I took over a semi-professional club on my own, I wanted to make sure I had all the tools to do the job,” says Young.
“In Non-League football, you don’t just have to deal with the players turning up and doing a bit of training. You have to deal with contracts, board of directors, media, the supporters.
“I had a great apprenticeship with John Hulse at Rhyl and he basically gave me my head. I coached against Roy Hodgson at Viking Stavanger in the UEFA Cup, so experiences like that and just going over and above workwise have helped me prove to people that I could do a job.”
Back-to-back: The Blues seal a second title in 2012 by drawing 1-1 with Northwich.
After leaving Rhyl in 2007 to become joint-manager of NPL Division One Lairds with Ian Doran, Young won promotion to the Premier via the play-offs, then left to be sole manager at struggling Colwyn Bay in October 2008 and did the same there in his first full season.
Opportunity
Then came the chance to lead Chester’s re-birth. “When you haven’t been a professional it’s more difficult to get your name known, and once I went to Colwyn Bay and I had Gary with me, we always said that opportunities don’t come around often and you have to take them,” says Young.
“There are a lot of very good, hard-working managers at this level and we knew that once we got the Chester opportunity, this was our chance to go forward.”
Having taken an 18-month sabbatical from his job as a performance manager for Mersey Rail Electrics, Young is now throwing himself into keeping his Conference North record breakers on track to tackle on the cream of Non-League.
But while he is full-time, his players – who Young affectionately terms “The Rabble” – will remain semi-pro. His budget is also likely to stay the same as Chester struggle to keep pace off the pitch with the rise on it.
Three and easy: Chester’s 1-0 win over Boston United gave them a third consecutive title earlier this year.
“Even in January and February I was still saying ‘We’ve had a great start’, because I was waiting for the bubble to burst,” says Young, who had won 93 of his 124league games in charge before yesterday’s trip to Guiseley.
“It is a tremendous achievement by the boys and we are made up by the fact that within three years, we are able to play some of the Conference big guns.
“People like Liam Watson at Southport last year have shown us what is possible as a part-time side, and like them and others this year, like Dartford and Woking, we are going in there to be as competitive as we can.”
