With our impending relegation this weekend, all the chat for weeks has naturally been around who should be our next permanent manager. I’m amazed that I’ve barely seen his name mentioned, but Paul Hurst should be head-hunted to be our manager next season. Here’s why.
Playing Career
As we all know, Hursty is a bona fide Millers legend, but it’s worth a reminder to anyone who has forgot/is too young to remember. He literally spent his entire playing career as a Rotherham player, making 438 appearances in the red shirt over 15 years. He made his debut in 1993, and played his final Millers game in 2008. He won at Wembley with us. He won back-to-back promotions with us. He went through God knows how many administrations with us. He deferred his wages for us. He was a proper one-club man in an era where that never happened.
Being a club-legend shouldn’t automatically get him the job, but it helps. So on to his managerial career, which is quite frankly superb.
Managerial Career
When you’re not a household name and you want to go into football management, you have to go and learn your trade at the lower echelons of football, which is exactly what Hursty did in 2009. Alongside another former Miller Rob Scott, Hurst took over Northern Premier League side Ilkeston Town in football’s 7th tier. In his first season he won promotion, but financial uncertainty at the club meant he moved to Boston United, another Northern Premier League side. As he had done at Ilkeston, Hursty achieved promotion in his first season to the Conference North, whilst also winning two cup competitions (the Northern Premier League Challenge Cup and Lincolnshire Senior Cup).
In March 2011, Hurst’s Boston were sitting in 2nd place in the Blue Square North when he joined Grimsby Town in the Conference (5th tier). The Conference is a notoriously difficult league to get out of, with only two promotion spots available and some pretty big fish spending years down there (Lincoln, Wrexham, York etc). After a couple of steady seasons, Hurst took Grimsby to the playoffs in 2014, only to lose out in the Semi Finals. The following season he took them one-step closer, losing in the Playoff Final to giants Bristol Rovers on penalties at Wembley (a Bristol Rovers side who would go on to get automatic promotion from League Two the following season). Finally, in 2016, Hursty took Grimsby back to the Football League, winning promotion via the playoffs.
After a good start to the 2016/17 League Two campaign, Grimsby sat in 8th position when Hurst was poached by League One side Shrewsbury, who had taken just 10 points from their opening 15 games (0.67 per game) and were languishing at the bottom of the league, 6 points adrift of safety. Hurst’s arrival saw an improvement in results, and their record since he joined reads P24, W9, D6, L9, taking 33 points from 24 games, an average of 1.38 points per game. Whilst the table shows they are still in danger (1 point above 4th bottom Port Vale who have a game in hand), Hursty will keep them up; a miraculous achievement given the state he found them in last October.
So on to our situation. We currently have a stand-in manager (a man who is doing the best he can in a job that he is ill-equipped for in terms of the tools at his disposal and his own personal expertise), but unless there is literally no money left, we will surely be appointing a new boss. If you believe Tony Stewart we will go to League One with a strong budget, and we do have some decent players, particularly at League One level, which is well below the standard of the Championship (see Wigan winning it at a canter last season and coming straight back this season, or conversely Bolton finishing rock bottom with 30 points last season and coming straight back up).
Meanwhile over at Shrewsbury there is one of the hottest young properties in English management, a guy with an impeccable record who has started at the bottom of the football pyramid and worked his way up in a notoriously cut-throat industry. Add in the fact that this highly-rated young manager happens to be a Rotherham legend, and I say there could not be a more perfect candidate for the role. If it was anyone else with a record as good as his I’d suggest he’d be keeping his options open for a shot at a higher level, but given his ties to RUFC, I think Hurst would want the job. He knows most of the backroom staff (Warney, Brecks, Pollitt etc) as they were all part of the successful 2000/2001 era, the fans would be behind him given his history, he’s only 42, and most importantly, he’s proved that he is a brilliant football manager.
So Tony Stewart, please go out and get Paul Hurst.
Hursty, save Shrewsbury and then please come home.
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Originally Posted by Timbertop
