Post by Croc on Jul 22, 2016 9:59:43 GMT
Pretty good article in the Guardian
Connah’s Quay’s Europa League journey: ‘What we’ve achieved is staggering’
Former Manchester City centre-back Andy Morrison has overcome alcoholism and falling out with employers to lead Welsh side Connah’s Quay Nomads on a European odyssey
When Andy Morrison finally put the telephone down, preparations for the biggest match in his club’s history could begin. “I had to ring up some of the lads’ bosses last week,” says the Connah’s Quay Nomads manager. “I said: ‘Look, they’re not just representing Connah’s Quay, they’re representing Wales – I need you to give them some time off work’.”
One or two will have to take unpaid leave regardless but Morrison will field something close to his strongest side against the Serbian side Vojvodina on Thursday and no one with a handle on his work of the past eight months will doubt him from here. “What we’ve achieved from where we started is staggering,” he says, and it is impossible to disagree.
When Morrison took over on 2 November last year the Nomads – officially known as Gap Connah’s Quay Nomads owing to their backing by a local personnel company – were bottom of the Welsh Premier League and in freefall. They finished the season fourth; now they are preparing for the second leg of a Europa League second qualifying round tie and it is a journey that, while putting an unheralded club on the map, has also revitalised the prospects of a manager whose reputation as damaged goods had hampered his career.
“I’d be naive not to think that has happened,” he says. “You think that if you do things right and work hard enough things will happen, but sometimes somebody gets a job and you think: “How on earth did they do that?”, or they’ve been sacked from three roles and suddenly get another, and you start to think maybe this isn’t your path.”
Morrison’s past has been well documented. A burly, powerful centre-back with Plymouth, Blackburn, Huddersfield and Manchester City, he became a cult hero during the latter’s toils in the late 1990s but a multitude of issues lay beneath. Battles with alcoholism, depression and, later, financial problems were as difficult as anyone will encounter; there were fights away from the pitch and others around it too, when intense, involved commitment would spill over. It has been tough but the turnaround has been significant and his focus is clear.
“If you can make mistakes, learn and grow from them you’ll be in a much better place than someone who is acting differently and has never had those challenges,” he says. “I’ve overcome many things and I’ve let myself down on many occasions, and I’m sure that’s hindered my career, but you won’t see me sitting around saying: ‘If, if, if.’ I’ve never lost the desire to work hard and I tell my players the same: nothing will get in the way of you succeeding if you’ve the heart and desire to go for it.”
Danny Harrison in action against Vojvodina
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Danny Harrison in action against Vojvodina Photograph: Nik Mesney/NCM Media
The Nomads have been quickly moulded in Morrison’s image. It has been a year of distilled highs, the most noteworthy coming on 7 July when Callum Morris’s goal beat the Norwegian side Stabaek in the away leg of their first qualifying round, setting up the matches against Vojvodina. They had been 25-1 to win in Norway after a goalless first leg; the result was remarkable and a further idea of the context is that, having returned home at 3.30am on the Saturday morning, some of the squad were back at their full-time workplaces by 8am for 12-hour shifts.
“Nobody gave us a chance,” Morrison says. “Stabaek had the first leg to see what we were about and that’s what makes it an even more incredible achievement. After about 15 minutes they were running riot over us so we changed the system around and took their ball players out of the game, and allowing probably their weakest player to have the ball. We just pushed on from there; we got the goal and in the end it was really comfortable, we could have scored more.”
Such quick thinking will come as little shock to those who have charted Morrison’s progress over the course of a decade as the assistant manager to Andy Preece at Worcester City, Northwich Victoria and another Welsh club, Airbus UK. The pair led Airbus into three European campaigns and Preece has said Morrison “should be coaching at the highest level”. His chance to go it alone at Connah’s Quay arose three months after a mystery-shrouded departure from Airbus; it was sweet, then, that the Nomads’ first European campaign was secured after a 1-0 Europa League play-off win in May against his former employers.
“They said it was amicable, and I said so too to save any bad press,” he says, unwilling to go into further detail. “A lot of things happened that shouldn’t have, but everything corrected itself with that result in the play-off. It corrected a lot of wrongs.
“As long as I manage or coach in football, no matter where I am, no victory could be sweeter than that one was. The emotions leading up to the game, the emotions during it, the elation afterwards, I’ll never match that again in my career. Wherever I go, I’ll never get near that game again emotionally and I think it holds me in good stead.”
The future holds more promise. Morrison admits Vojvodina were a class above anything the Nomads had faced when they travelled to Novi Sad for last week’s first leg; they lost by a single, deflected, 86th-minute goal, though, and the task now is to play to their strengths in a return game that will be played 20 miles from Connah’s Quay, in Rhyl.
“That was one of the hardest games I’ve ever been involved in, such was their quality,” he says. “It’s a team that beat Sampdoria 4-0 last year. They did what we normally do to teams with their desire and aggression, dominating and bullying. Not that our lads withered – we stood up to them, stifled them and made it horrible. We’ll be ready for Thursday night now and let’s hope we can make it as hostile and uncomfortable as they did for us.”
Morrison has built the Nomads’ success on an obsession with “preparation, hard work and very small details”. It has taken both parties this far and, when he pauses to think about it, it is difficult for him not to feel charmed at last.
“We will certainly ask more questions of them this time and with the way everything has gone here nothing would be a big surprise,” he says. “If we go through, I wouldn’t say afterwards it was a big shock. Things have just gone so well for me in the last eight months.”
Connah’s Quay’s Europa League journey: ‘What we’ve achieved is staggering’
Former Manchester City centre-back Andy Morrison has overcome alcoholism and falling out with employers to lead Welsh side Connah’s Quay Nomads on a European odyssey
When Andy Morrison finally put the telephone down, preparations for the biggest match in his club’s history could begin. “I had to ring up some of the lads’ bosses last week,” says the Connah’s Quay Nomads manager. “I said: ‘Look, they’re not just representing Connah’s Quay, they’re representing Wales – I need you to give them some time off work’.”
One or two will have to take unpaid leave regardless but Morrison will field something close to his strongest side against the Serbian side Vojvodina on Thursday and no one with a handle on his work of the past eight months will doubt him from here. “What we’ve achieved from where we started is staggering,” he says, and it is impossible to disagree.
When Morrison took over on 2 November last year the Nomads – officially known as Gap Connah’s Quay Nomads owing to their backing by a local personnel company – were bottom of the Welsh Premier League and in freefall. They finished the season fourth; now they are preparing for the second leg of a Europa League second qualifying round tie and it is a journey that, while putting an unheralded club on the map, has also revitalised the prospects of a manager whose reputation as damaged goods had hampered his career.
“I’d be naive not to think that has happened,” he says. “You think that if you do things right and work hard enough things will happen, but sometimes somebody gets a job and you think: “How on earth did they do that?”, or they’ve been sacked from three roles and suddenly get another, and you start to think maybe this isn’t your path.”
Morrison’s past has been well documented. A burly, powerful centre-back with Plymouth, Blackburn, Huddersfield and Manchester City, he became a cult hero during the latter’s toils in the late 1990s but a multitude of issues lay beneath. Battles with alcoholism, depression and, later, financial problems were as difficult as anyone will encounter; there were fights away from the pitch and others around it too, when intense, involved commitment would spill over. It has been tough but the turnaround has been significant and his focus is clear.
“If you can make mistakes, learn and grow from them you’ll be in a much better place than someone who is acting differently and has never had those challenges,” he says. “I’ve overcome many things and I’ve let myself down on many occasions, and I’m sure that’s hindered my career, but you won’t see me sitting around saying: ‘If, if, if.’ I’ve never lost the desire to work hard and I tell my players the same: nothing will get in the way of you succeeding if you’ve the heart and desire to go for it.”
Danny Harrison in action against Vojvodina
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Danny Harrison in action against Vojvodina Photograph: Nik Mesney/NCM Media
The Nomads have been quickly moulded in Morrison’s image. It has been a year of distilled highs, the most noteworthy coming on 7 July when Callum Morris’s goal beat the Norwegian side Stabaek in the away leg of their first qualifying round, setting up the matches against Vojvodina. They had been 25-1 to win in Norway after a goalless first leg; the result was remarkable and a further idea of the context is that, having returned home at 3.30am on the Saturday morning, some of the squad were back at their full-time workplaces by 8am for 12-hour shifts.
“Nobody gave us a chance,” Morrison says. “Stabaek had the first leg to see what we were about and that’s what makes it an even more incredible achievement. After about 15 minutes they were running riot over us so we changed the system around and took their ball players out of the game, and allowing probably their weakest player to have the ball. We just pushed on from there; we got the goal and in the end it was really comfortable, we could have scored more.”
Such quick thinking will come as little shock to those who have charted Morrison’s progress over the course of a decade as the assistant manager to Andy Preece at Worcester City, Northwich Victoria and another Welsh club, Airbus UK. The pair led Airbus into three European campaigns and Preece has said Morrison “should be coaching at the highest level”. His chance to go it alone at Connah’s Quay arose three months after a mystery-shrouded departure from Airbus; it was sweet, then, that the Nomads’ first European campaign was secured after a 1-0 Europa League play-off win in May against his former employers.
“They said it was amicable, and I said so too to save any bad press,” he says, unwilling to go into further detail. “A lot of things happened that shouldn’t have, but everything corrected itself with that result in the play-off. It corrected a lot of wrongs.
“As long as I manage or coach in football, no matter where I am, no victory could be sweeter than that one was. The emotions leading up to the game, the emotions during it, the elation afterwards, I’ll never match that again in my career. Wherever I go, I’ll never get near that game again emotionally and I think it holds me in good stead.”
The future holds more promise. Morrison admits Vojvodina were a class above anything the Nomads had faced when they travelled to Novi Sad for last week’s first leg; they lost by a single, deflected, 86th-minute goal, though, and the task now is to play to their strengths in a return game that will be played 20 miles from Connah’s Quay, in Rhyl.
“That was one of the hardest games I’ve ever been involved in, such was their quality,” he says. “It’s a team that beat Sampdoria 4-0 last year. They did what we normally do to teams with their desire and aggression, dominating and bullying. Not that our lads withered – we stood up to them, stifled them and made it horrible. We’ll be ready for Thursday night now and let’s hope we can make it as hostile and uncomfortable as they did for us.”
Morrison has built the Nomads’ success on an obsession with “preparation, hard work and very small details”. It has taken both parties this far and, when he pauses to think about it, it is difficult for him not to feel charmed at last.
“We will certainly ask more questions of them this time and with the way everything has gone here nothing would be a big surprise,” he says. “If we go through, I wouldn’t say afterwards it was a big shock. Things have just gone so well for me in the last eight months.”