Setting goals on a different pitch

Former England fast bowler Steve Harmison has turned to coaching a football club

A decade after leading England’s bowlers to the country’s biggest Test victory in modern times — the Ashes win against Australia in 2005 — the former cricketer Steve Harmison is trying his hand at managing in the sport he’s always loved.

Soccer.

“Football was always my big love,” said Harmison, 36, who is leading Ashington AFC, the minor-league club in his hometown in northeast England that plays eight levels below the Premier League. “It was just that I turned out to be better at cricket.”

Harmison, who retired from cricket in 2013, took 226 wickets for England’s national team and was once ranked as the No 1 bowler in the world. Switching sports is not common in England, and his coaching stint has prompted mutterings that it is all a publicity stunt. Not true, said Harmison. “Anyone who thought that doesn’t know me.”

When he arrived in February, Ashington had lost six games in a row and was at risk of relegation from the top division of the Northern League, which is made up of semiprofessional and amateur teams and is the second-oldest soccer league in the world, after England’s top level, the Football League. (The Football League includes the Premier League).

Ashington’s victory at Sunderland RCA last Tuesday was its seventh straight and its ninth in 12 games since Harmison took over, and the club now sits comfortably in the middle of the standings, safe from relegation.

After that win, Harmison’s former captain on the English cricket team, Michael Vaughan, jokingly suggested on Twitter that the nearby Premier League club Newcastle United, which has been struggling lately, could soon come calling.

Harmison supports Newcastle, but like many British fans, he has much deeper connections with the minor leagues. “I’ve watched Northern League football all my life, and I trained with teams from the League to keep fit when I was playing cricket,” he said. “And I’d much rather be with a couple of hundred people paying 5 pounds to watch lads who really want to play than be one of 50,000 paying 35 pounds to watch players who are not really bothered.”

Ashington, a former coal-mining town of 27,000, has a remarkable history when it comes to soccer.

In the 1920s it was one of the smallest towns ever to have a club in the Football League. The town produced the brothers Bobby and Jackie Charlton, who played on England’s World Cup-winning team in 1966, though locally, they ranked behind their uncle, Jack Milburn, a legendary Newcastle player who scored 239 goals and was honoured with statues in both Ashington and Newcastle.
More recently, Ashington has churned out cricket players, like Harmison and his younger brother, Ben, who plays county cricket for Kent. The town’s newest star is Mark Wood, a fast bowler called up by England for its current tour of the West Indies. “He watches us home and away,” said Harmison.

When he took over, Harmison realised the challenges he would face in a different sport and wasn’t afraid to lean on others for help.

“Lee Anderson, my assistant, was a player and captain here for about 15 years, and Ian Skinner is as good a coach as you’ll find,” Harmison said. “I’ll do my coaching badges when I get the time, but my main role is to 'steer the ship’ and manage a group of about 25 players and coaches. I spent about 20 years in changing rooms as a professional cricketer, a lot of them as a senior player, so I know how they work in team sports.”
The coaches, like the players, are paid only for their expenses.

“That is one of the differences from professional sport. You have to understand that they’re doing it because they love playing, but it isn’t their living, and jobs have to come first,” said Harmison. “A number of times I’ve had players starting eight-hour night shifts at 11 or 12 after they’ve finished a match at 9:30 or later.”

Harmison believes the club has succeeded so far because he has been able to capitalise on his players’ love for the game and has given them the freedom to succeed.

“We’ve told them that anything they do is their achievement, not the two or three of us off the field,” he said.

Harmison has continued with his other jobs, as a cricket commentator with BBC radio and Sky television and as an adviser to young players with the Professional Cricketers Association, but he has no plans to go into cricket coaching. “I can’t imagine getting up in the morning and looking forward to trying to coach people like me,” he said.

While good results get any manager noticed by larger clubs, he would be happy staying where he is.

“I would like to go up the levels in non-league football, but only with this club,” he said. “It can be done, but you have to do it properly and make sure the club has a solid foundation — for instance it would cost another £1,000 per match if we went up to the next league, and that’s a lot of money at this level. But I can’t ever imagine wanting to manage anyone else. If I go up the leagues, it’ll be wearing our black and white.”