I remember when we first went to see him about taking on the team. We walked in, with our shorts and trainers on. He was there, picking out weeds, and we said: “Harry, we want the job.”

He looked up from his weeds: “What?”

“We want the job.”

“Piss off, I’m busy. Leave me alone.”

But we were persistent with it. We kept going down once a week, and finally the penny dropped with him that we were serious. That we could do what we were telling him we could.

Jonno

Rammy’s last league game of that season was against Bacup Borough on a Friday night. Rammy got beat 6-2, and after the final whistle I went straight to the bar with Harry.

As we sat down with our drinks, Harry leaned over, said congratulations and shook my hand.

“What?”

“New managers. I’m going to give it to you.”

Before I could process what had just happened, Paul Williams, who was Rammy’s caretaker manager, came in. Perching himself down on his haunches next to Harry, he says: “So, what’s the plans for next season?”

Harry went: “There’s no plans, cock. You’re done. You’re finished. There’s the new manager with his mate.”

“I’d done thousands of warm-ups, but now I was in the hotseat and it was my responsibility, I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing”

No talk of budgets. No talk of wages. It was just: the job’s yours if you want it.

At that point we weren’t thinking about getting on the coaching ladder, developing players or anything like that. It was about getting a group of pals together and seeing what we could do – and if we could have some fun.

It was only ever going to be fun if we were winning, though. And, once we did start winning, that’s when it changed us.