"I really loved being at Halifax" - Billy Heath on securing promotion, his second season and leaving the club

"I think it's arguably my biggest achievement."

In the space of one season, Billy Heath had repaired a broken football team.

Some of his methods were questioned and weren't well-liked, but no-one could argue with the outcome.

But his turnaround of FC Halifax Town could have ended prematurely had the 2016-17 campaign not had it's turning point halfway through the season.

Town had been beaten 1-0 at strugglers Stalybridge, prompting empassioned cries of "Heath out!" by the travelling Halifax fans.

Next up was a home game with Chorley, three days later.

Heath switched to a 3-5-2, dropping Tom Denton to the bench in the process, and won 2-1, the first of ten victories in 14 games that propelled The Shaymen into the play-offs.

"If we'd got beat by Chorley, David would, or could, probably have, and quite rightly," Heath says on the possibility of Town chairman David Bosomworth getting rid of him had things turned out differently.

Heath says his relationship with Bosomworth was "always good".

"David knows this himself, he likes to micro-manage things," Heath says.

"But I spoke to David last summer, I still speak to him.

"He's criticised at times for being very prudent, but what he does is the best thing for the football club.

"He won't let it get to a position where it's under threat.

"When you're a fan, you want the best and you want to win things, but you have to take a step back and say 'is that really achievable with the finances we've got?'"

Promotion that season certainly was achievable, with Heath estimating Town had the third biggest budget in the Conference North.

They also had momentum going into their play-off semi-final with Salford, having won eight of their final 11 league games.

"We knew it was a massive game, Salford were really good," says Heath.

"I'd come across Bernard and Jonno several times and they were fantastic.

"You knew it was going to be a very tight game, and very tense."

That it was.

Both ties finished 1-1, before Halifax went through on penalties at The Shay, where they would host the final against, of all teams, Chorley.

"Who knows what the club would have done if we'd not won," Heath reflects. "Would I have been there, would the players have been there, would David have made a change?

"I could tell the players were feeling the pressure.

"We tried to limit that all the way though the week, and didn't do anything special.

"Managers change things for a final, from what they've done in the league, they start doing this and that, changing routines.

"I remember the changing room was very tense, play-off final, at The Shay, big crowd.

"I walked over to Jordan Sinnott, and there he was, smiling his face off and he went 'don't worry gaffer, we'll be alright today'.

"He played the game like that, that was his outlook.

"I'll always remember that."

Sinnott was right, going on to produce a man-of-the-match performance in the final.

He died, tragically young, aged 25, in January 2020.

"He was a very funny guy," says Heath, who signed Sinnott from Altrincham.

"Some of the things he could do in training, some of the things he did that season.

"We had very methodical, physical, strong, sixes-out-of-tens and we had icing on the cake on Kosylo, Jordan and Peni (Richard Peniket).

"Jordan was a top, top footballer and a top, top lad.

"Really good to be around, always up to something, always smiling.

"I used to say to him 'Jordan, you unnerve me sometimes because you're always smiling'.

"My teams aren't smilers, we're big, strong, aggressive, play in the right areas, dominate people, and he was smiling all the time!"

Sinnott provided the style in the team to go along with the substance of others, as did winger Matty Kosylo.

"A special talent and I could tell that from minute one, a really good player, but he had that edge to him," says Heath, who says he had a special group of players at his disposal that season.

"There was none of this leadership group that everyone likes to talk about now," he says.

"Matty Brown was huge in what we were doing, so was Danny Hone, but there was lots of them.

"Kevin Roberts was fantastic, a proper pro.

"Danny Clarke was the best of the lot for that, he was absolutely brilliant as a character.

"It was a really good group, they just wanted to win football matches.

"Every training session, every game - even though we didn't win for nine games - it wasn't because of lack of effort or trying.

"They all played their part."

The bond between players and manager was evident when Heath's walk onto the pitch for the trophy presentation after beating Chorley was greeted with a collective chant of 'Heath out' by his squad, echoing what the supporters were shouting so vociferously after the Stalybridge defeat.

"They had the freedom to do that with me," Heath says.

"I can be very harsh with players, especially when the game's going on, because I can never take the foot off the gas.

"But the players know I'm behind them 100 per cent, they know I'll fight their corner and we create an environment where players want to come and play, want to be together as a unit.

"If the environment isn't right, you won't win anything.

"That group we had, they just enjoyed being around each other. Training sessions were always good, always high tempo, always challenging, always wanthing to push each other.

"When I walked past the changing room, there'd always be noise, laughter, always energy.

"That's why they did what they did."

Reflecting on that summer's recruitment, in preparation for a return to the fifth tier, Heath admits "we probably should have done a bit more".

"That's not a criticism of David but we maybe should have got a few more Conference National players in," he says.

One player added permanently was goalkeeper Sam Johnson, who Heath had brought back to the club midway through the previous season to take the place Steve Drench.

"I always liked Drenchy, but when Sam became available, we had to do it," Heath says.

"Fantastic keeper, as laid back as they come, which at times can be a negative but at other times can be a really good trait.

"And he's six foot five, what's not to like?

"His presence was fantastic. He came straight into the group and enjoyed it.

"The changing room was a fantastic place, even when we weren't winning games.

"We still knew we had the right people in there and when we brought Sam in, it was a big, big plus for us.

"A top, top keeper at that level."

But there was one player Heath missed out on that he wishes he had signed that summer.

"The one I really wanted and we didn't get done was Ash Palmer," he says.

"I worked with him at Ferriby and he was fantastic.

"I knew how good he was and that he'd make a big difference to us.

"And he was the right character, the right DNA, the right mentality, and we should have got him.

"It's not the super striker everybody wants, it's not a big name, but we should have got him."

As it was, Town started the 2017-18 campaign well; after failing to win in their first four matches, they then won six of their next eight.

A stunning 3-0 win at Leyton Orient on Tuesday, September 12, which sent Town second in the table, marked a fork-in-the-road, says Heath.

"It was pouring down, and they were looking at this crazy northern guy stood on the touchline with no coat," he recalls.

"I looked at their bench and they were all sat in their dugout because it was sheeting down, as if someone was pouring a bucket of water on me, and I look as if I've just gone swimming.

"We'd started off like a steam train because it was that lift of having just been promoted, you harness that.

"The biggest problem was we weren't full-time.

"We got home at four in the morning from Leyton Orient, didn't train on the Thursday because they were all at work, I think there were only two who weren't working at the time.

"Then we had to go to Dagenham, got thumped, 3-1, and that's the difference.

"There's no recovery, I could see it when the players were getting on the bus when we picked them up.

"By the time we hit Christmas, people's legs were falling off, people were very, very fatigued."

After the 2-1 home win over Bromley on September 23, Halifax didn't win again until December 9.

That win, and the one that followed, proved a false dawn though, and after a 4-1 home drubbing by Maidenhead in the FA Trophy on January 13, Heath and his assistant Mark Carroll knew their time was up.

"When you've been around the block, you know," he says.

"You can smell it, that you really need to win the next game.

"We got beat at home and I knew.

"I said to Bob (Mark Carroll) in the car 'David will pull the trigger' and Bob agreed, because we'd been around and we knew. You can sense it."

Some Town fans never took to Heath due to the team's style of play, but Heath says the results speak for themselves.

"Everybody's obssessed with aesthetics and what things look like," he says.

"When we came in, our job was just to win football matches.

"I said to David 'what it looks like is irrevelant'.

"If you can attract the best players in your division, I could change style overnight.

"Unfortunately for me, I've never had that pot of money, except at Halifax, and I thought it was the best way - why would I want to change anything when I came to Halifax when we'd had four promotions and won god knows how many cups?

"We've always had success doing it that way.

"We don't play the way we're portrayed. Sometimes we're direct, when it's needed, but we have two wide players in my teams, who can put balls in the box.

"We like to get balls in areas but we have two forward-thinking wide players.

"Yes we ususally have a big, strong centre-forward but we play in areas, in their half, but that's not fashionable. But fashion doesn't win you things."

Heath's remit on arriving at Halifax was promotion in two seasons. He did it in one.

And while establishing the club back in the fifth tier would happen under his successors, Heath undoubtedly laid the groundwork for what followed.

"I really loved being at Halifax, I really enjoyed it," he says.

"What the players did in nine months, dear me. I don't know how many clubs have done that in nine months.

"The players that did that were phenomenal.

"I'll enjoy it more when I'm finished, because there's always something else to do at the minute.

"But of course we're proud, absolutely.

"I understood the task as soon as I walked in, I knew how difficult it was going to be because it was a different environment for the players.

"It's not a great place to start off at a football club, when they've just been relegated. That's not where you want to be.

"And when I'm saying to David 'who's staying?' and he's saying 'he's not contracted, he's not contracted, he's not staying, he wants out', and I'm going 'well, we can't dither about this, we've got to get players in'.

"But I think it's arguably my biggest achievement. I think it was bigger getting Halifax promoted than Ferriby, because of the circumstances we walked into."