Source: Northern_Echo
Saturday Spotlight: Turning Quakers around gave Little lift-off
Darlington are locked in their toughest fight against relegation from the Football League since 1988-89 and it was at this stage of that season that Brian Little was handed the managerial reins. Assistant Sports Editor Craig Stoddart spoke to the man who attempted to lead Quakers to safety.[LNB] THE manager of Gainsborough Trinity has been in demand this week.[LNB] Struggling towards the wrong end of the Blue Square Premier, yet there has been a steady stream of media wanting a word.[LNB] That's because the man in question is Brian Little, manager of Aston Villa when they won the League Cup in 1996, so his views on tomorrow's final are much sought after.[LNB] Newcastle-born, he enjoyed a successful playing career as a striker with Villa in the 1970s, but he is better known around these parts as the most successful manager in Darlington's history, having won two promotions in the early 1990s.[LNB] Ignoring a brief spell as caretaker at Wolves, Quakers were Little's first club and Gainsborough his tenth in a career that has seen him manage at the top level and take charge of around 850 first-team matches. But, he admits it feels like millions.[LNB] Yet when asked if that League Cup remains the pinnacle of his achievements, he cannot help but think back to his days at Darlington, the club who gave him his first chance in management 21 years ago this month.[LNB] Then, just as now, they were on the verge of dropping into non-league, but Little rejuvenated Quakers and the success he enjoyed became the platform on which his career has been based.[LNB] I've done quite a lot of media recently and a lot of people have been talking to me about winning the League Cup with Villa, as you can imagine, he said.[LNB] They have asked if that cup win was the highlight of my career. But I keep saying that if Gary Coatsworth hadn't scored that goal against Welling then none of what followed might have happened.[LNB] That's the goal at Darlington I remember most.[LNB] His header from the edge of the box that looped into the corner you never forget moments like that.[LNB] I keep an eye on the club from a distance and I keep in touch with Kevan Smith. I've got great affection for the place. It was a tremendous time, a tremendous place and I loved it.[LNB] The feeling was mutual, after Quakers won unprecedented back-to-back titles: the GM Vauxhall Conference and Division Four.[LNB] Such glories appeared light years away on February 13, 1989 when a 35-year-old Little was handed the reins of a club locked in a fight to avoid relegation from the Football League.[LNB] At a time when only the bottom club dropped down, Colchester United kept Quakers off 24th position, yet Little inherited a team that had won only two of their 27 games and neither victory had been at Feethams.[LNB] Predecessor Dave Booth went following a 3-1 home defeat to Leyton Orient, giving Little 19 matches to save Quakers.[LNB] A daunting task for a young and unproven manager, but he says: I wasn't worried about taking the job on, even though they hadn't won a home game.[LNB] If you look at my career I don't think risks are something I've ever taken too much notice of! Wherever I've gone and whatever I've done, nothing has been on the side of normality.[LNB] It's a trait of mine. I don't think I've ever been lucky enough to walk into a club where everything's been rosy, I've always taken a challenge on and even at that young age I wasn't the sort that worried.[LNB] A few weeks before the Darlington job came up I'd decided it was time to look for a job of my own and I was probably in the right place at the right time.[LNB] I remember meeting the old chairman [Archie Heaton] at Blackwell Grange and he was saying Well Brian, I don't know a lot about you so if you come in and do three games we'll assess you after that'. I said I'm sorry Mr Heaton, that's not going to work for me'.[LNB] So he agreed to give me a trial until the end of the season, but Dick Corden really was the man who influenced the decision and I just got stuck into the job.[LNB] Corden was on the board at Feethams, having previously been among the hierarchy at Middlesbrough where Little had been youth team coach, learning the trade under manager Bruce Rioch and his assistant Colin Todd.[LNB] Little soon made his presence felt, barring directors from travelling on the team coach. That was one of the things that I brought with me from Middlesbrough,[LNB] explained Little.[LNB] Bruce was very professional and organised, that was something I felt I needed to implement.[LNB] Your team bus is the team's domain and there are times when you need to have your distance.[LNB] He made an immediate impact. Darlington lost only one of his first five matches, while a 2-1 victory over Lincoln, with goals from Jimmy Willis and Kevin Stonehouse, secured a longawaited home win.[LNB] It was a bit of a culture shock, he says. We always seemed to be battling against problems.[LNB] You sensed anything that could be perceived to be a problem was emphasised into something bigger than it really was. That was an eyeopener for me, I just seemed to be battling every day, trying to get things done.[LNB] You would have an idea what your team was going to be then the day before the game, or even on the morning of the game, a player would ring in sick. When things are going badly and if a player has half an excuse to get out of playing then they use it.[LNB] I remember a couple of players ringing in to say they had had an accident in the kitchen![LNB] People didn't have the confidence, desire and the belief to get out of relegation.[LNB] By the end of April, Darlington and Colchester, with Jock Wallace at the helm, remained in a two-way relegation fight and they went head to head at Feethams.[LNB] Quakers went into the game 23rd but they came out of it 24th after losing 2-1.[LNB] It proved to be the second of five consecutive wins that hauled the Us out of trouble.[LNB] I remember that game well, says Little. We scored first but ultimately we lost and that was a defining moment. As it turned out they won the fight and we went down.[LNB] But it was a very difficult period. You could tell when you walked in at Darlington that things weren't right.[LNB] The culmination of the season was going to Scunthorpe and getting relegated. I remember that day more than anything else in my football career. It remains a defining moment.[LNB] Archie Heaton had resigned a couple of days earlier and Dick Corden had become chairman.[LNB] For his first game we lost 5- 1 and I'll never forget him coming into the changing room afterwards and saying he wanted a word. Straight away I'm thinking Well here we go, that's the end of that then'.[LNB] We sat in the stand and had a good chat for half an hour. He said We'll stay fulltime for two years to try and get back into the League and I'd like you to do that for us'.[LNB] He also hinted that if I were to leave then he'd also pack in and he'd only been chairman a couple of days. I thought Dick was fantastic that day.[LNB] We'd built a tremendous relationship and from that day forward we tried to look at the club in a different light and change as much as I could.[LNB] He continued: I released 20 players in one day. We lost to Carlisle at home in the last game and a couple of days later I had one-to-one meetings with all the players.[LNB] With the first few it was a long chat, but eventually you were just talking for talking's sake so I called all the lads individually and said Look, we're moving on'.[LNB] It was an awkward day for a young manager. I'd been a youth coach before and in some respects it is more difficult to tell a young lad they are never going to be a footballer.[LNB] But, a lot of the older lads at Darlington had wives and mortgages.[LNB] That was my first harsh lesson in management how ruthless and clear-cut you need to be to try and move your club on.[LNB] If you are going to stay in the game for very long you have to be successful and that's something I understood very quickly.[LNB] With 20 players to replace, Little managed to convince a raft of senior pros to give nonleague a go.[LNB] The Conference or Blue Square Premier as it's now known may have a stigma attached to it.[LNB] But it's nothing like the stain on a player's career that it appeared to be back in 1989, when Darlington became only the third club to suffer automatic relegation from Division Four.[LNB] Although Lincoln City had returned, Newport County disappeared.[LNB] Little succeeded in convincing a series of senior pros to drop down from the Football League.[LNB] Frank Gray, Kevan Smith, David Corner, Andy Toman, David Cork and John Borthwick were recruited and all became Darlington heroes during two fabulous seasons.[LNB] Corky and Borthwick were great for me, but they were all brilliant and it was a super team, said Little. To win two titles with the same group of people means that there weren't weaknesses anywhere.[LNB] We had a few games where it got a bit rough. There was a game at Merthyr Tydfil that was more akin to rugby than football. It was the roughest game I've ever seen![LNB] Darlington sealed their return to Division Four, with Coatsworth scoring that goal at Welling, almost exactly a year to the day that the relegation had been confirmed.[LNB] Little added: I would class everyone from that time as friends, even though I don't see them very often.[LNB] It would have been nice to have kept a shirt or something but I never thought about it at the time, I was too busy getting on with my career. I was never a great collector of stuff but the memories stay forever.[LNB] Only time will tell whether Steve Staunton can go on to emulate Little in using Darlington as a launching pad and create some glorious memories of his own.[LNB]
