My Time At Town - Jamie Paterson: “It was more than being part of just another football club”

Nottingham Forest beat Halifax 4-0 on the day, but a 14-year-old Jamie Paterson had seen enough.

“My uncle Russell Black played for Halifax, he joined them from Sheffield United when Billy Ayre was in charge,” Paterson says.

“My first memory of going was to watch him play against Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup tie, and I fell in love with the club on that day.

“The stadium was dilapidated, the old stadium with the track around it.

“I don’t know what it was but something gripped me on the day.

“Nottingham Forest brought about three or four thousand fans. It was basically mayhem.

“There were police dogs guarding all the away supporters. I think at half-time they managed to scramble onto the pitch and a few fights broke out.

“It was FA Cup fever I suppose, and my uncle was playing who was my hero when I was a kid.

“He invited me down for a trial, I was playing at Celtic as a schoolboy but he said ‘why don’t you try your luck in England?’

“So Halifax signed me on a YTS scheme, Gerry Brook was the youth coach.”

So began a two-year apprenticeship and an introduction to the realities of life at The Shay.

“We had a professional player to look after, as apprentices do. You’ve got to clean their boots and get their training kit every morning,” Paterson recalls.

“Back in those days we really didn’t have any money at all. I remember money was that tight that we actually had a fisticuff fight in the dressing room with another 12-14 other apprentices because we only had one bag of kit, and you basically had to fight your way through to get it.

“If you got your pro a blue top, white shorts and blue socks you’d done very well.

“When you go home, people are saying ‘oh you’re a professional footballer, you must be rich’.

“But the reality was we were completely not. We were getting paid something like £23 and the club paid for your digs and a travel card.

“But I wouldn’t have changed it for the world, they’re some of the greatest memories ever.”

With his uncle moving to play in the German Second Division, Paterson went to stay with a family in Stainland.

“My brother was staying there as well, he went through the YTS system, and a year’s pro,” Paterson recalls.

“To get to training some mornings, if it was middle of January, well, you can imagine trying to get up and down that hill in Stainland, it’s a bit of a mission.

“There’d be six foot of snow up there, but we never took a day off, we never missed training. Great memories.

“I started doing well in the youth team, Arthur Graham was the coach, former Scottish international, played for Leeds and Man United.

“He learned me the game the way he played it, and I picked it up straight away.

“From there it just escalated and I eventually got my first-team debut at Manchester United at the age of 17.”

Alex Ferguson’s side had beaten Town 3-1 at The Shay in the first-leg of their League Cup tie on September 26, 1990.

“I was basically helping out at the ground, fetching things for the Man United players like Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister and Mark Hughes,” says Paterson.

“And then I was told the night before the second-leg two weeks later that I was in the squad, and then on the night I got on for about 20 minutes, which was unbelievable. One of the best memories ever.

“I was told it was for a test of character. I didn’t really play as a regular after that, I actually got put back to the intermediate side a few times.
“But soon after that I did become more regular in the first-team.”

Paterson says the 1992-93 campaign was his breakthrough season at The Shay.

“I was starting to make a bit of a name for myself then, I got a couple of goals and a couple of local clubs were talking about me, and stories about them watching me and putting a bid in for me.

“That season made people sit up and think ‘this little kid’s not bad’.”

The same couldn’t be said though of team-mate Godfrey Obebo, whose association with Halifax was never destined to be in quite the same league.

“He was from Africa and he used to do these mad African dances in the shower,” Paterson recalls.

“Every day after training, he used to go into The Weavers and order a giant Yorkshire pudding with all the trimmings.

“Every day, he used to send the plate back with the giant Yorkshire pudding still on it.

“After about four days the guy who ran the pub said ‘Godfrey, why do you keep sending back the giant Yorkshire pudding, it’s what you ordered’.
“And he said ‘oh, I thought it was the bowl’.

“The man was a legend. He didn’t stay at the club that long but he left us with some of the funniest stories.

“You could write a book about him. He didn’t understand the offside rule either - every time the ref blew his whistle he’d just shake his head and play on.

“He took a throw-in to himself once. Threw it to himself and played on!”

Unfortunately for Paterson, such anecdotes were only temporary light relief from a season of struggle.

The Scot had established himself in a side fighting desperately to avoid relegation from the Football League for the first time in the club’s history.

And it all came down to the final day against Hereford.

“We played pretty well, we created lots of chances, but we just couldn’t score,” he recalls.

“We hit the bar, we hit the post, the keeper was making magnificent saves.

“The Shay was a full house on the day and you could just sense that it was slipping away.

“A very, very good friend of mine, Derek Hall, got the winner. He was a previous Town player and we used to get on great.
“I was coming through the ranks when Derek was a pro and he was really good to you, he would take you under his wing, tell you what you were doing right and wrong, and be a fatherly figure.
“When he scored the goal, he put his head down and just walked back. It’s not a goal I believe he wanted to score.

“It was devastating. Mick Rathbone, one of the best football people I’ve ever come across in my whole life, had taken over just after halfway through the season. Unfortunately he didn’t keep us up but god did he try.

“As a manager and as a friend, he was a great person to be around, and the boys absolutely gave their all in every single game.

“But unfortunately it just wasn’t to be. No matter how well we played we just couldn’t seem to get the win we needed.

“I think if you speak to some of the fans they’d say some of the football we played under Mick was first-class, but we couldn’t get the goals to keep us up.

“It was a real eye-opener going out of the Football League because people were talking about the club going to fold, it was the end of Halifax Town’s existence, and the hardcore support might drop to 200-300.

“So all these stories were going round, but they survived under great people on the board at that time and we soldiered on.

“We thought we could bounce back straight away but we were going into unknown territory.

“We probably did what a lot of clubs did at that time ‘oh it’s alright, we’re staying full-time, we’re going to be fitter than the opposition, we can outrun them’.

“It didn’t work like that at all, it was very tough.

“Ok, the players maybe lacked technical ability at that level but they were fit and they were strong and they were powerful.

“We probably underestimated it a little bit and it took us a while to get back.”

Paterson would eventually play a pivotal role in getting Town back into the league - more of that later - but only after what seemed an inevitable move away.

“I was getting interest from several clubs and then Falkirk, in the Scottish Premier League, came down to watch another player,” he says.

“We were playing at Witton Albion and they sent their first-team manager Jim Jeffries and their chief scout down to watch one of their players, but on the night I had a cracking game, for some reason, and they decided to ditch the other player and put an offer in for me.

“That would have been 1994. But it didn’t quite work out because the manager who signed me, I think four months later, he took another job at Hearts.

“A new manager came in, brought his own players, and all of a sudden, you’ve got a dream move to the Scottish Premier League, playing against your heroes Celtic and Rangers, and the next minute, you’re on the scrapheap and looking for a club.

“So I didn’t have the best of times up there and I ended up going to Scunthorpe United for a couple of years, which I really enjoyed, it was a good little club.

“But again, the manager who signed me got the sack, they brought in a new manager and I wasn’t really his cup of tea.

“He got the sack and they brought in Brian Laws, and I was gone within five to six months.

“That’s when, god bless his heart, Super Georgey Mulhall got in touch and said ‘Jamie, come back to Halifax’.

“George had seen me play a number of times in the Intermediate League because he was youth coach at Huddersfield Town. We used to play them regularly.

“He always used to be in my ear, he’d always make you feel ten foot tall. ‘What a great player you are Jamie, you should be with us’ and things like that.

“I still had my base in Halifax, I was commuting to Scunthorpe.

“I’d been in Halifax for a long time, I had a lot of friends there, met a lot of good people, knew most of the supporters.

“So there was only really one place I was going to go at that time, and that was back to Halifax.

“I’d looked at the squad, I’d looked at some of the players George had assembled and I knew they were very, very good footballers at that level.

“It just felt right.”

Three years on, Paterson says he returned to “pretty much the same old club”.

“The ground hadn’t really been developed, there was nothing new going on.

“But as the season went on and we kept winning and winning and winning, the crowds were coming in and John Stockwell (Town chairman) would have been under huge pressure because the ground wasn’t up to Football League standard.

“I think it was a case of ‘look, it’s Halifax, they’re going to blow up somewhere along the line, give it to January and see how they go’.

“I think in January we won almost every game and that made them sit up and listen, and they pulled their finger out and decided to start doing the ground then.

“So it was just after halfway through the season that all the building started to take shape, and when you went into the club, day-by-day there were diggers, men working, and you could just sense it was an exciting time.

“I’m a big believer that every football club has a time, and that was definitely Halifax’s time.

“It was a great place to be around then.”

Paterson says the signs were there right at the start of the campaign that something special was going to happen.

“We played Doncaster in pre-season, who went down that year, and we were miles better than them on the night, but we lost 1-0,” he recalls.

“We were thinking to ourselves ‘do you know what, they’re a Football League team, they’re not that great, we’re not that far behind them’.

“Then we played Huddersfield, another pre-season friendly at The Shay, in-front of a decent crowd, and we ended up winning 1-0.

“We just looked at each other in the dressing room after and just kind of nodded our head, as if to say ‘do you know what, we’re not bad’.

“And then once you get a few wins under your belt, your confidence grows, people are starting to come to the games and it just snowballs.

“But that Huddersfield game was the eye-opener where we thought ‘we’ve got half-a-chance here’.”

Even the departure of experienced defender Peter Jackson to Huddersfield as manager 10 games into the season didn’t stop The Shaymen.

“What a great man,” Paterson says of Jackson. “We were devastated when he left but he had to go because he got a bigger and better offer from Huddersfield Town.

“At that stage, we thought ‘if we lose Jacko, how are we ever going to replace him?’ but again, Sir George worked his magic and got Brian Kilcline, who was abolishing houses I believe, I think he was headbutting the walls, and came out of retirement.

“But again, he replaced quality with the same quality. Killer was a different kind of player to Jacko but they had professional qualities. And he was just a breath of fresh air.

“He was a big man, like a wrestler. They used to call us the odd couple, because I used to room with him.

“He’s a big six foot four giant and I’m this four foot three midget!

“He was a great lad, a gentle giant.”

Paterson feels he played some of the best football of his career in that promotion season.

“We changed the system for various games but George was mainly a fan of 3-5-2,” he says. “But he would play me in the hole behind the front-two.

“If things weren’t quite going right, sometimes I would start on the right or the left in that system, but if we needed a goal or to break a team down, George would just say ‘Jamie, push into the hole, play as a number 10, try and create some chances and go where you want’.
“That’s where I did my best work really because that’s where I played as a kid, and that was the position that suited me best.

“When George and Kieran (O’Regan) said ‘go and play that role’ I was delighted because that’s where I’d always wanted to play.

“But if they’d said ‘Jamie, you’re in goal tomorrow’, I’d have played there too.”

Paterson admits he got some stick from those team-mates behind him.

“Kieran O’Regan always used to wind me up. ‘You just do what you want, you’re the son of George, you’re Jamie Mulhall’.

“He had to do all the running, but I’d just say ‘well you shouldn’t be so fit Kieran, if you weren’t so fit I’d do a bit more’.

“It was a bit of banter, but on a few occasions George gave me a free role and licence to do what I wanted, because he’d watched me as a youth player and he said to me on a few occasions ‘Jamie, you’ve got the ability to turn a game on its head in a split-second’.”

When asked whether it was the right players or the right manager that made the difference for Town that season, Paterson says: “It was a culmination of both. You never, ever really heard George raising his voice.

“He was old school, but he wasn’t old school in his mannerism as previous coaches I’d known such as John McGrath and Billy Ayre.

“They were very forceful in their voices, but George didn’t have to raise his voice.”He would sit you down, one-on-one, he would speak to you face-to-face, he would explain exactly what he wanted you to do, or he would sit down and say ‘look, this is where you’re going wrong, this is where you’re going right’.

“He was just a brilliant one-on-one coach, and that was to all the players. I’m sure they’d all say the same.

“And he had that fine mix with Kieran. He was still a great footballer at that time and still very fit.”He was a fantastic man and an incredible footballer. He was great to play with, a real good team player, good leader.

“Just a joy to be around.

“He could put his commands across on the pitch in the same kind of manner.

“Kieran could lose his temper, but if he did, you would know that it was for something that wasn’t quite working.

“But their one-to-one management skills were outstanding and I think that’s why the boys excelled.

“Most of them were playing 10 out of 10 most weeks, which is unusual for a whole team. But I believe it was down to the management.”

Town’s main rivals that season were big-spenders Rushden and Diamonds.

“We went to Rushden and got done 4-0. We got a man sent-off, I was struggling with a hernia at that time, I needed an operation,” Paterson recalls.

“One the way home, we were thinking ‘are the wheels starting to fall off here?’.

“Then when we analysed the game, they were nowhere near four goals better than us. But on the day they took their chances and we didn’t.

“I remember saying to myself on the way back and to a couple of the boys ‘when we get these at home, we are going to town on them big time’.

“They were the big money spenders, a couple of players were a bit big time.

“So the home game against them, we absolutely footballed them to death from start to finish.

“It was one of the best games I played in in my career. Everything just seemed to click.

“Mark Bradshaw was putting balls across the box, the goalkeeper was making saves, everybody was just on top of their game.

“When you’ve got 10 or 11 players doing that, you’re very hard to beat.”

Paterson was named Conference Player of the Season, and crowned the campaign with a spectacular goal as Town sealed the title with a win at Kidderminster.

“We knew it was coming,” he says. “We played Southport just before that and we were 3-2 down, and came back to win 4-3. Dave Hanson came off the bench and scored two.

“I knew on that day that we were going to be champions. Everything was going right.

“Then when we went to Kiddy and all the support was there. They got a penalty early doors, Andy Rhodes saved it, great save.

“Someone from upstairs was smiling on us that day.

“Super Geoff got one off his shin and then I scored a screamer.

“I think I got about 18 that season but I could have got 30 if I hadn’t passed to Geoff!  

“But that was special. When we got relegated against Hereford, my ambition was to help Halifax back into the Football League.

“And to score one of the goals that actually helped them back. Yeah, it’s quite a story.”

The Town squad was then treated to a civic reception and an open top bus parade.

“The Halifax Building Society wouldn’t sponsor us for whatever reason, and we were sponsored by Nationwide.

“I always remember, as the open-top bus was driving past the Halifax Building Society, all the fans started singing ‘Nationwide! Nationwide! Nationwide!’

“All the boys were in fits of laughter because it was basically giving two fingers up to the bank.

“Great memories.”

Paterson is reluctant to go into what happened after the celebrations died down, with Mulhall retiring and O’Regan taking over as manager.
“It was a huge shock because we were doing things the club had never done before, we were winning things, we were doing well in the league, we were starting to bring in quality players, players that Kieran had known that played at a higher level.

“It still eats away at me to this day. They should have been given a much better chance, a longer chance, of taking the club forward.

“I believe that Kieran definitely had the ability to do that, 100 per cent.”

As it had before, a move elsewhere was looming given Paterson’s impressive form.

“Rushden and Diamonds had tabled a bid,” he says. “At the time it would have been the biggest non-league transfer fee in history, it was £180,000.

“I turned it down because I didn’t want to move to that part of the world, I was quite settled, I liked the Yorkshire people.

“But I ended up going on a free transfer to Doncaster Rovers in 2000.”

When asked how the move came about, Paterson recalls: “Nothing was set in stone, there was no contract on the table from Halifax.

“We were supposed to sit down and talk but in-between that time I got a phone call from Doncaster and I ended up there.

“But it was one of the most difficult decisions in my life to leave the club. I was a supporter.

“It was sleepless nights, calling people. It was more than just leaving a club, it was leaving a whole family community.

“I’m living in the town, going out in the town, my friends are in the town, my children are in the schools. Everything revolved around Halifax.

“So to leave the club was very, very hard, but I felt it was the right time.

“The chairman at Doncaster had huge visions for the club, huge plans. He sat me down and said ‘this is where we’ll be in five to ten years Jamie’ and look at them now, he proved that.

“I enjoyed my time at Doncaster, it was the right move at the right time.”

Paterson played for Halifax more than any other club in his career, and says his connection with the club runs deep.

“The bond for me was in my first game when I went to watch my uncle playing. I bonded with the club straight away.

“When I think back to the team they had - Rick Holden, Lee Richardson, Wayne Allison, Phil Brown, Paddy Roche - these were people I’d have had in my Panini sticker book.

“And then all of a sudden you’re rubbing shoulders with them, meeting them.

“Then after that, I was living and working in the town, I was with a girl from the town at that time, my son was born in the town.

“We wouldn’t just play for Halifax on a Saturday and that was it, you wouldn’t see us.

“A few of us lived in the local area, so I’d be doing school visits during the week, putting training sessions on for children, or going to visit people in hospital, all that kind of stuff.

“It was more than being part of just another football club where you travel an hour, you play, then you come home.

“The fans were just incredible. I was playing good football, I was confident, I was being allowed to express myself because of the management team, and I was playing some fantastic players that are unsung heroes.

“I wouldn’t have changed a thing for the world.

“When I speak to people and they ask me ‘who was your favourite club’, I always say Halifax was my first love.”

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