Rover's Mickey Walker- A few more thousand would be nice

02 August 2010 11:03
If anyone can appreciate the seismic strides that Doncaster Rovers have made since the turn of the century, it's Mickey Walker. The hugely-popular Rovers director of football, now 65, has become part of the fixtures and fittings at the club since arriving in the summer of 1999, serving in countless capacities from youth team coach to assistant boss to caretaker "gaffer" before settling in his current all-encompassing role in 2006.His time has incorporated three promotions - one at the home of football - the Johnstone's Paint Trophy and many halcyon days along the way, not to mention a move of ground from the prosaic Belle Vue to the palatial Keepmoat Stadium.Champagne moments at the likes of Wembley, Stoke City's Britannia Stadium and Cardiff's Millennium Stadium have provided the icing on the cake to a remarkable football rags-to-riches renaissance.Quite simply, Rovers' rise from the dregs of the Conference to the second-tier of English football is fairy-tale stuff.Although if anyone had ventured upon Walker's arrival at the club that Rovers, the laughing stock of football in 1997-98 - when they finished 92nd by 15 clear points with a goal difference of minus 83 - would be dining at the same table as Leeds United, Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough just over a decade on and stylishly holding their own, it would certainly have been men-in-white-coats time.But that's the glorious reality for Rovers, who start their third successive Championship campaign at Preston North End on Saturday - for the record, Doncaster finished below mid-table and behind the likes of Hayes and Kingstonian at the end of Walker's first season at the club.The glory days may have been all well and good, but total bricks-and-mortar transformation of the whole club in terms of both structure and mindset and the shifts in attitude towards it represents the most pleasing thing for Walker, awarded a testimonial by the club last season.A well-known figure throughout "Donny", Walker doesn't have to sell the wares of Rovers to the town's business folk any more. Or beyond for that matter, with football acknowledging the club as being a huge success story and a pathfinder for many aspiring lower-league outfits.On the spectacular metamorphosis of Rovers, a music-hall joke for most of the 1980s and 1990s among many Doncastrians - now equally quick to sample the bubbly in recent seasons - Doncaster-bred Walker said: "To be fair, year on year since I joined the club and moved up from the youths to work with Dave Penney as his assistant and be manager for three or four weeks before Sean (O'Driscoll) came in, it hasn't been a rollercoaster ride, but mainly been on the up."It's a time to be proud. I started here some 10 years ago after coming from Nottingham Forest as a youth-team coach under Paul Hart and basically left a Premiership club to come to one that was nearly out of business and at the bottom end of the Conference."We had to borrow training facilities and you look at what we've got now and how things have developed over the past 10 years. "Five lovely pitches, pop-up sprinklers and other state-of-the-art stuff. I wouldn't say it's an ostentatious set-up, but we do have a restaurant with two chefs, a nutritionist, hydration station, physio room, CD room and weight rooms."There's everything here which is productive to putting a good side out on the pitch to help all the things that Sean (O'Driscoll) and Richard (O'Kelly) do in putting the team together."The team have played what I think has been some of the best football in the Championship in the past few years."As Rovers' evolution has continued, Walker has helped to spread the club's scouting net overseas and developed further links at home and abroad, although that's not scratching the surface in terms of a multi-faceted working brief.For an ebullient character like Walker, whose late father used to play for the club, his spell with Rovers is representing a memorable swansong to his long association in football, with the evergreen veteran loving every minute of it.Walker said: "I love it and where I am at the football club. I never blow my own trumpet because it doesn't bother me, but I don't realise when I go out there that I am the director of football at a Championship club which is held in esteem by other people."But we haven't lost our roots and grounding - that's important."I support the mechanism and basically link in between the board, Sean and the chief scouts. I think I've had a decent eye for a player over the years and have learnt that working at Liverpool, Leeds, (Nottingham) Forest and now Doncaster and we've pulled one or two rabbits out of the hat!"It's more important I do that. I also make the business and commercial links, but it's mainly the football links because Sean and Richard can't do anything more than get the team ready. Especially when we've got to the level we have."Walker quipped: "people might think it's glamorous flying out from Stansted to Slovenia in 24 or 48 hours. But it isn't that nice in the middle of winter, I can assure people!"Having consolidated their Championship status over two impressive campaigns, Rovers have made a further bold statement this summer, shelving out a club record six-figure fee to bring in loan star Billy Sharp on a permanent basis from neighbouring Sheffield United.Sharp's capture has certainly raised a few eyebrows with chairman John Ryan and his board digging deep to bring in the sharp-shooter, with the charismatic Rovers owner hoping his headline gesture will help to yield bumper five-figure crowds on a regular basis at the Keepmoat next term.Rovers' disappointing 2009-10 average of 10,992 - boosted by huge travelling support from the likes of Newcastle United, West Brom, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest and Barnsley - was almost 1,000 down from the previous season's level, with Ryan desperate to fill the Keepmoat in 2010-11.Like Ryan, Walker would love Rovers to pack out every home game, but admits that simple economics have played their part in the dipping levels.On the hopes of attracting a few more thousand in some sections of the Keepmoat, Walker said: "It would be nice, but I feel for the public myself, as well."You look around at some of the larger clubs in the Championship and their crowds are down because many people can't afford two games a week now. "It's certainly not cheap to take children and money at the moment is tight."If you look at things, pro rota, the fans have really supported us. But I'd love another two, three or four thousand to come every week."It's not through playing poor football and giving bad entertainment."The entertainment and the football is there, but I just think it's sheer economics that people have had to pull their belts."No more so than up in Yorkshire, where it happens a lot quicker than London and the southern areas

Source: FOOTYMAD