Irving Weaver: The magnitude Harrogate Town's 'momentous' promotion to League Two still yet to sink it

A sixth-tier club with an average attendance in the region of 250 people when he took control back in 2011, the Sulphurites will be mixing it with the likes of Bolton Wanderers and Bradford City next term - in the Football League.

“It’s quite momentous, I’m very proud,” Weaver said, speaking after his team’s 3-1 victory over Notts County.

“What we did at Wembley was incredible. It almost fazed me. It’s taking a while to sink in, and I still don’t think it has, fully.

“Notts County are a big side with a lot of history but we deserved to beat them and we’ve earned this promotion.

“We’re in dreamland, really.”

Sunday’s experience was one that nobody associated with Town will ever forget. It is the glorious pinnacle in terms of everything the club has achieved during its 106-year existence, but has been some time in the making.

The early part of Weaver’s tenure as chairman saw the club take some small steps in the right direction. The last three years have brought constant, rapid, tangible progression.

The turning point was undoubtedly the decision to move from part-time to full-time professional status in the summer of 2017. Promotion from the National League North followed within a year, while the following season saw Harrogate qualify for the National League play-offs.

This term, they’ve gone one better and won them. If coronavirus hadn’t forced the early abandonment of 2019/20, who knows, Town could well have gone on and won the title outright.

“To get where we’ve got to in the last three years since we went professional, we’re a proper club now,” Weaver added.

“Everything has to come together for a side to blossom like this. You need to get your recruitment right, you need team spirit and a group of players who really buy into what you’re trying to do. Ours have.

“There is a real honesty about the group. They’ve trained so hard, especially since they came back to prepare for the play-offs.

“We’ve played with attacking flair and the focus on fitness in our approach has given us an advantage over other teams. As a team, they’re just so good together.

“For me, it’s the team spirit that has been key. It’s such a big part of what we’ve achieved and I’m not ashamed to say that Simon deserves credit because he’s created that with the characters that he’s brought in.”

Simon, of course, is Irving’s son, the club’s first-team manager, the man ultimately responsible for masterminding Harrogate’s on-field success.

Their father-son/chairman-manager relationship is rather unusual in football, but it’s paid off for Town, while making the pair’s promotion experience all the sweeter.

“When I got on the pitch after the final whistle he was the first person I went to,” Irving Weaver said.

“I just said that this is down to all of your hard work over the years, it hasn’t happened by accident. I’m proud of what he’s achieved. I’m not embarrassed to say that because he’s my son.

“We’ve kept fairly quiet about our relationship but it’s obviously working. This (father-son) situation is fairly unique and it could have gone horribly wrong - but it hasn’t.”

As for the play-off final performance itself, Weaver admits that, like many others, he was taken aback by how Town’s players conquered any nerves they might have been suffering from and immediately got on the front foot.

“I was so surprised how quickly we settled and got on the attack,” he said.

“The way we took the game to them, we could have been three or four up by half-time.

“Just like in our semi-final against Boreham Wood, the energy we played with in the first 15-20 minutes and the quality of the football was something else. There was a touch of Bielsa about the way we suffocated them.

“We had a bit of a wobble, which I think was to be expected in a game of this importance against a team as strong as Notts County, but we recovered and fully-deserved to win the match.”

Deservedly into the EFL, Town will be competing in a different world next term and Weaver insists that they cannot afford to embark on their new adventure in starry-eyed fashion.

“There are some big clubs in League Two, which is fantastic, but we’ll have to get used to that quickly so that we are able to compete with them,” he added.

“We’ve realised our dream by getting here and there seem to be a lot of people out there who are confident that we will do well next season.

“My view is that a season spent stabilising as an EFL club would be a great achievement in itself.”