In his next challenge as Torquay United manager, Chris
Hargreaves leads his young side back to the place where he started his
footballing life: Grimsby Town.
The Gulls head to Blundell Park on the back of a seven-match
unbeaten run, which includes three consecutive wins over Lincoln City, Nuneaton
and Chester respectively, and also find themselves in the Play-off zone for the
first time in their 2014-15 Vanarama Conference campaign.
Now the challenge facing United is to keep that record
intact at a place which holds many memories for their manager.
Back in 1988, Hargreaves- now 42- joined the Mariners as an
apprentice- after briefly signing schoolboy forms with Everton- and broke into
the first team at Blundell Park under the guidance of their then manager, Alan
Buckley, at the age of 17 in 1989.
Buckley, who masterminded the Mariners’ rise from the ‘old’
Division Four to the ‘old’ Division Two- similar to the rise enjoyed by
Cambridge United under John Beck at the same time, was soon earmarking
Hargreaves as potentially being the club’s first £1million player; there were
rumours of the late Brian Clough being interested in signing him for Nottingham
Forest.
However, neither the big money move, nor the transfer to the
City Ground ever materialised for Hargreaves as he later joined Hull City for
£50,000 in 1993 before embarking on a career that saw him appear for West
Bromwich Albion, Hereford United, Plymouth Argyle, Northampton Town, Brentford,
Oxford United (twice) and Torquay.
During his two and a half years at Plainmoor as a player,
Hargreaves skippered the Gulls to promotion from the Conference in 2009 and
now- in 2014- he is attempting to lead Torquay back into the Football League as
a manager; and a positive result against his first professional club could go a
long way to helping his young side achieve that objective this season.
For the Mariners, those heady days of the late 1980’s and
early 1990’s, as well as the late-1990's when Buckley returned for a successful second spell, must seem like a very distant dream as, like the Gulls, they are
vying for a return to the Football League having been relegated from League Two
at the end of the 2009-10 season.
Footnote: In March 1996, Hargreaves’s former boot boy, Gary
Croft, achieved the title of becoming Grimsby Town’s first £1million player
when Blackburn Rovers paid the Mariners £1million for his services.
Chris Hargreaves at Grimsby Town 1988-1993: 64 appearances, seven goals.
Chris Hargreaves at Torquay United 2007-2010: 121 appearances,
ten goals.
