In the first part of a special in-depth interview with the Courier, former Halifax Town manager Chris Wilder looks back on his time as a player and manager at The Shay.
The seeds of success that Chris Wilder has achieved in more than two decades of management were sown at Halifax Town.
Wilder was named LMA manager of the year and Championship manager of the year when he led Sheffield United into the top flight in 2019, and he nearly did so again last month.
Other promotions were previously secured at Oxford and Northampton.
Management all began for Wilder at Alfreton in October 2001, where he won four trophies in seven months.
The tone had been set, but life in the Shay dugout would prove far less straightforward.
The short stint at Alfreton was sandwiched between spells at Halifax, the first as a player.
“I was at Sheffield United and I went down to Brighton on a short-term contract,” Wilder told the Courier.
“We actually played against Halifax and Jamie Paterson scored, and they beat us at The Shay.
“I was pals with Lee Butler so I was in contact with him and they got wind my deal was coming to an end, and that I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
“And I got a call from Mark Lillis to see if I fancied going there.
“I really enjoyed it. We were in and around the play-offs.
“We ended up misisng out but I enjoyed my football, which is what I wanted to see my playing days out.”
An 18th placed finish in Wilder’s first season with Town preceded a second-from-bottom finish the season after.
“Mark lost his job, which was unfortunate, because we were pretty competitive in my first season,” Wilder said.
“We didn’t start the second season great, Paul Bracewell came in and there was a change of culture.
“It was a struggle and at Christmas I received a career-ending injury that finished me.”
Wilder says he had coaching in my mind ten years before his career-ending injury.
“I’d been wrapped around football since I was 16,” he said. “It wasn’t the only thing I knew but it was my big love and you want to stay in the game in some capacity.
“I did my coaching badges early, around 25, C Licence and B Licence, so I was preparing myself from then.”
Wilder’s spell at Alfreton, from October 2001 to the following summer, acted as his bridge playing and management.
“The Halifax chief exec, Tony Kniveton, was chief exec when I signed as a player,” Wilder recalled.
“The financial situation, the over-spend, the off-the-pitch issues just dominated everything really.
“Paul came in and there was a big spend to stay in the division but it didn’t work out.
“I injured my back at Blackpool on Boxing Day.
“I got back playing because I was told I could play semi-pro, so I got back playing at a low level and was asked to be taken over as manager at Aflreton.
“We had a successful end to that season and then Tony called me in the summer to ask if I’d come up for a chat.
“He said ten local businessmen had all put in ten grand each and they want the club to survive.
“But they didn’t have a training ground, they didn’t have any balls or bibs and they didn’t have any players!
“There was nothing. In a way it was a couple of steps up into the Conference but there were no pre-season friendlies organised, there was absolutely zero there.
“It was a blank canvas, but the local guys had put in ten grand each so their love of the club was massive, and it was going back up to a really competitive level and I took that opportunity to go full-time.”
Wilder might have had a blank canvas, but there was no money for paint or brushes.
“You have to start somewhere, speaking to players and inviting them in, putting a pre-season together,” he recalled.
“Getting players together, talking to the boys that had fallen out of the league with Halifax.
“It was tough but it was enjoyable.
“It held me in good stead in terms of my journey because from a crisis point of view, it was really as deep as you can get.
“I had to organise everything, putting a staff together, putting a pre-season together, trying to get players in, trying to sort the contracts out, all within a tight budget.
“And that’s before putting a team together tactically and physically to get them ready for a tough division.
“It was incredibly, incredibly challenging but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.”
An eighth placed finish in Wilder’s first season looks like a minor miracle under the circumstances.
“We got off to a good start, and then we were a bit inconsistent but we were delighted to finish eighth,” he said.
“We’d given the club a good footing to move forward, but there were still the issues with the stand, there were still the issues with the previous owners, there was still the financial aspect hanging over the club.
“I don’t think I’m wide of the mark in saying the club could quite easily have dissolved and gone under completely if it wasn’t for those ten guys that had a love of their club.
“I had two great lads working alongside me, Lee Butler and Sean McAuley, who was player-coach.
“It was hands to the pump for everybody.
“We were changing at the ground, we didn’t have a training ground.
“Some of the stories I could tell you about going up to the moor and getting booted off, and going to schools.
“It was the nomadic life of the club at that time, and trying to compete in a very competitive, financially driven league.
“But it was great grounding for me.”
Wilder says the finances of other teams in the Conference were “absolutely streets ahead” of Halifax, where every month presented a challenge just to make ends meet.
Managing players, staff, budgets, training, travel and countless other jobs: did it sometimes feel like Wilder was wearing 20 different hats?
“I don’t think there’s anything that can get chucked at me and I won’t know how to at least try to handle it,” he says.
“I was giving the players their monthly cheques, and sometimes I had to decide who to give them to first because there might not have been enough funds in the account to clear some of those cheques.
“So I’m looking at the players thinking ‘well, Peter Atherton’s had a Premier League career’ but I’m having to say ‘Pete, I’ve got another player with a wife and two kids and he’s relying on this money to keep him afloat’.
“But we were having wage deferrals put on our players who were on 400, 500, 600 quid a week.
“So all of a sudden, you’re down to 200 or 300 quid a week.
“So all of a sudden, you’re down to 200 or 300 quid a week.
“Twenty hats? That was a minimum.”
Slowly but surely, momentum gathered.
After finishing 19th in 2003-04, The Shaymen ended the following season in ninth before the breakthrough campaign of 2005-06.
“Sometimes you have to take a step backwards,” Wilder reflected.
“Maybe that second year was a bit more of a struggle financially than the third and the fourth, where we might have been able to attract a few more players.
“I think there was an investor who came in around that time, so we might have had a bit of a boost there that allowed us to get better players in.
“But to get to fourth was incredible, with the budget we had and the competition we were up against.
“We played Grays Athletic in the semi-final, who were paying their players about three or four grand a week, and had all these superstar players out of the Football League.
“We were 3-0 up in the first-leg at half-time, and they fought back to 3-2.
“They made loads of noise afterwards that they’d batter us in the second-leg but we ended up drawing 2-2 and go through to the final.
“That was remarkable for everybody connected with the club, and a reward for all the hard work they’d put in, whether it was office staff, groundstaff, everbody.
“From me being in there three years ago when we didn’t have anything, to being in a play-off final and being 90 minutes from getting back to the Football League, it was a reward for all the hard work.
“It wasn’t done by somebody coming in and bankrolling it.
“Accrington Stanley went up that year and they had some incredible players, but they paid a few quid as well at the time.
“To get to the final was a great achievement.”
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