Harrogate Town opinion: Let’s be grateful that the Sulphurites do things differently in these days of disloyalty

“You want to stop sugar coating it and tell it as it really is,” said one disgruntled, long-standing Town supporter as he passed me on Wetherby Road, a week after the defeat at Crawley had left us hovering perilously close to the League Two relegation zone.

Then, in a reference to manager Simon Weaver, he added: “He’d have been out of the door at any other club by now.”

I didn’t get a chance to reply as he walked past and, to tell the truth, where would I have started? We did beat Barrow that day though.

I think his outburst was probably in response to me writing that, ‘I think most Town fans, certainly those based in the real world anyway, understand the achievements of a team punching well above its weight in the big boys’ league,’ a couple of weeks before.

It surprised me because he’s seen where Town have come from and how they’ve grown out of all expectation and recognition under the Weavers, but I suppose the trauma of travelling down to Crawley and witnessing the hapless performance that day must have still been raw.

Even so, football fans can be fickle, demanding loyalty from players, yet turning on a manager at the slightest whiff of difficulty.

But here’s the rub, I was speaking my truth, as I always do in these pages. I had no wish to see a change of manager then, now or in the future. Neither do most Town fans I would wager.

Back in May 2018 I wrote that as far as I was concerned, after achieving the impossible and getting Town into the National League (note: not even the Football League at that stage), Simon Weaver had a job with Harrogate as long as he wanted it. I’m certainly not about to change that opinion just because we’re in the bottom half of League Two.

Not that it’s my call of course and, this is probably where the long-standing Town supporter and I agree slightly, with a father and son at the helm things are run a little differently at Wetherby Road. Although I do like to think that a good non-dad owner would stick by a manager that’s taken his team to heights they’ve never been to before.

Whilst all the other clubs around us chopped and changed their managers, Town have steered a difficult but stable course away from stormy waters seeking to drag us down.

Three wins in four including two superb, battling away victories at Newport and Mansfield have seen us climb to safety, looking behind and wondering what all the fuss was about.

A victory over Rochdale on Bank Holiday Monday would even see us surpassing the points total from last season, but let’s not get over confident.

It’s felt much more of a slog this season and we’ve come awfully close to the bottom two without ever dropping into it, but the dogged, never-say-die attitude of the team since the January transfer window changes has kept us up. That and the new defence.

Furthermore, I listened to Simon Weaver speak passionately to BBC Radio York of leaving a legacy for the town in terms of a football club to be proud of and thought who better to keep us up than the man who understands the club inside out, appreciates where we’ve come from and who holds a burning desire to continue his unfinished journey.

And, if you remain unconvinced, just marvel at the goings on at nearby Elland Road. In just 14 short months, Leeds have careered haphazardly from Marcelo Bielsa to his antithesis Sam Allardyce, in a panic measure with four games left, to avoid the drop after stupidly parting company with the best manager they’ve had since Don Revie.

I vividly remember elongating my browsing in a record shop in Armley whilst eavesdropping on a conversation about Bielsa’s sacking the day before. The consensus of opinion from the three Leeds fans present was that he had to go because they were leaking too many goals.

But, this was a team with a colossal injury list coming off the back of a difficult run of fixtures, with more winnable ones to come.

There was no loyalty towards Bielsa for his achievements in getting Leeds back into the Premier League, whilst playing some of the most exhilarating football you’ll ever wish to see. No trust in him to pull through, no desire to stand beside him even if relegation beckoned, and no realisation of the value of the special relationship he had with the fans and what he'd done for the culture of the club.

A club and some supporters who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. I couldn’t help butting in as a neutral to say, "just be careful what you wish for.” And here we are.

And if you’re still unconvinced, just glance slightly north-east at York City and their travails since parting company with John Askey for hitting a rough patch the season after he’d brought them back up into the National League.

Then ask their fans if they’d like to see the club run more along the lines of ours. Ironically, Hartlepool turned to Askey, a decent manager loved by the York fans, to save their season and he failed to do so.

So let’s be grateful that Town do things very differently in these days of disloyalty and short-termism as we prepare to celebrate another wholly-deserved season in the Football League, won on merit with the smallest budget in the division.

How many other managers in this division faced with our resources would manage that? It’s a rhetorical question, but one worth asking all the same.