In this exclusive feature, FC Halifax Town manager Chris Millington honours his backroom crew at The Shay by taking us behind the scenes.
Along with assistant manager Andy Cooper, goalkeeping coach Paul Oakes, head of sports science and medicine Aaron Scholes, sports scientist and kit man Jack Drewery, assistant manager Andy Cooper, director of youth, junior, and community football development Steve Nichol, and video and data analyst Dylan Mistry, Millington also spoke with the Halifax Courier about head of recruitment Gareth McClelland.
Andy Cooper
“He oversees a lot of the training programme in terms of pulling everything together, so he’ll pull together my input, the input of the sports science side and liaising with Aaron, the physio. So he’s incredibly important in terms of the training programme and knitting it all together, making sure it runs smoothly and effectively, and that the messages we’re trying to get across are done so effectively. His analysis and his ability to add value from a statistical analysis point of view is great, he’s insighful and thoughtful how he’ll weigh up opposition’s strengths and weaknesses and identify areas where we need to be careful and areas we can exploit. He’s got a good, well-rounded ability to impact individuals and team performance. The way he behaves around the place, he’s such a cool, calm character, nothing really ruffles him. The two seasons he’s had have been challenging to say the least, but the way he’s approached has been in such a calm, collected manner. I think all the players really look up to him because of his behaviour and how he approaches things.
“As much as I don’t feel I could do the job without him, I wouldn’t want to either. For me, the real joy of working in football is the relationships that develop, whether it’s staff, players or fans. But when you work so closely, as I do, with the staff, and certainly in terms of Coops, it’d be far less enjoyable if he wasn’t around because he’s such a great guy to work with. As is Joe Sargison, who helps us in a supporting role, and gives us an excellent ability to reflect on performances and look through the emotion and some of the other things that influence the way you look at a game, and just strip it right back to performance, what we were trying to achieve, what we managed to and what we need to think more clearly about trying to improve. He’s invaluable in that sense and is so loyal and honest and supportive. Part of the joy of working with Halifax Town is working with him.”
Paul Oakes
“Goalkeeping coach is Pogsy’s official title, and it encompasses his primary duty of coaching, educating, and guiding the keepers to ensure they are fully prepared and capable of performing. He puts everyone at ease with his easygoing humour, ties the players and staff together really well, and goes above and beyond behind the scenes to support the group’s morale and unity. He also devotes a great deal of time to creating his amazing travel quizzes. He travels the nation with us but is unable to work a full-time schedule; instead, he is paid on a session-by-session basis. Every day at 6:30 a.m., we get together at Saddleworth to travel to Leeds for training; his level of dedication is astounding.
Dylan Mistry
“We’ve worked really hard at building a performance model, which helps all the staff view the games through the same lens. So when we watch a match, we all watch it and we all value different parts of it differently, but we’ve built a model that allows us to watch a game as staff and be able to identify different actions and different things that are happening, so we can identify what’s good, bad or indifferent. What that does is allows Dylan to analyse oppositions really thoroughly but then communicate that to the rest of the staff in a way we all understand very clearly. So he takes an awful lot of the pressure of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of oppositions and then communicates that to us as a staff so it all knits together, and then when we come up with a game-plan and present it to the players, we’ve got a really depp, thorough understanding of what we’re trying to do to an opposition and why we’re approaching it in that manner. The more clarity we can communicate that with, the more likely it is the players are able to implement it properly. Without Dylan, that would be a nigh on impossible task. We’ve got to remember pretty much everyone at the club has other commitments, other jobs, but that doesn’t take away from the huge commitment that we get from the likes of Dylan to do everything they can in the job as if it as full-time.”
