Paul Heckingbottom loves the FA Cup, not least because of his remarkable feat one season of losing in the second round yet scoring in the third.
Now the manager of Sheffield United, with a quarter-final against Blackburn Rovers on Sunday, Heckingbottom was once a hard-working defender at Darlington in 1999. They got beaten by Gillingham in the cup on November 20, but then reprieved. “It was when Manchester United pulled out, remember that?” Heckingbottom says, laughing.
The holders withdrew after being invited to play in the Fifa Club World Championship in Rio as European champions, triggering controversy, recrimination and a vacancy in the third round. “We were the team who got pulled back in as the lucky losers,” Heckingbottom says.
So he and his team-mates from the fourth tier travelled to Villa Park to face Aston Villa before a crowd of 22,101 on December 11, 1999. “I ended up scoring,” Heckingbottom adds of his 15-yard strike past David James, the England goalkeeper. Darlington still lost 2-1, so Heckingbottom has also achieved the impressive feat of going out of the FA Cup twice in three weeks.
The cup makes him smile as he sits in the players’ lounge at their Shirecliffe base, reflecting on the break from the “absolutely relentless” Sky Bet Championship — in which they are second in the table, six points clear in the automatic promotion places. They beat Millwall in the third round, and then the cup run started. “For us, there’s a tension that comes with league games, and there hasn’t been any at cup games,” Heckingbottom says. “There’s a party atmosphere, carnival, get behind the boys. We want to win but embrace everything that comes with it, like the circus that came with Wrexham in the [fourth] round. I’m not saying it didn’t wind us up at times.”
The circus was all around the Wrexham story, their Hollywood owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, and their televised push for glory. “We went to Wrexham and we were ‘just there to make up the numbers’ — that was the media, the story,” Heckingbottom says. “It was not Phil [Parkinson, the Wrexham manager] and the team. I get back [after the draw] and my wife, Clare, is asking me, ‘Who did you play?’ Because she’d had more text messages than me off her friends, saying, ‘Did Paul meet Ryan?’ No, I didn’t meet him.”
He understands the fascination with Wrexham. “The way their owners are and the size of Wrexham now in terms of worldwide appeal is huge. That’s good for football. Our players were aware of that.” The replay at Bramall Lane, after a 3-3 draw in North Wales, got spiky at times, and Billy Sharp had a few choice words about the visiting side afterwards. “Well, Phil had a go at Billy after the game,” Heckingbottom says. “We behaved brilliantly. [Paul] Mullin [the Wrexham striker] is coming off when it’s 1-1 and they’re still in the game and he’s having a go at our fans. No problem. We just wanted to win and we won.
“Then we got that draw [to host Tottenham Hotspur] so it’s worth all that, a break from the league and the position we’ve got ourselves in [second], the stresses that come with it. Again, it was one for the fans. We approached it that way, enjoy it — a lot of our players, especially the boys we put out in that game, had never played a Premier League team before.”
Now, all those tuning in on Sunday will hear one of the great sounds of English football: Bramall Lane’s Kop filling up the senses with the Greasy Chip Butty Song to the tune of John Denver’s Annie’s Song. “It’s one of the best songs,” Heckingbottom says. “I’ve brought teams here, Barnsley and Leeds, and listened to that and to now be manager of Sheffield United and to have that behind us, it’s a privilege. I’ll never take it for granted. The fans don’t realise how important and powerful they are, how much they help the team.
“Have a look at the Spurs game. The place was bouncing. We wanted to put on a show. And now we’ve got another home tie.” He has huge respect for Blackburn, but knows the prize. “If we do the job, we can give the fans a day out at Wembley, which is big.”
Passionate about football, Heckingbottom has always been able to see beyond it. His father, Mick, worked down the Shafton pit near their village of Royston, on the edge of Barnsley. “In the miners’ strike, we got food tokens for free school dinners,” he says. “My dad was on strike. I walked to school with all the other kids with the dads on the picket line. All around that area took a hammering. It was huge on the family. Dad retrained: rather than fixing machinery down in the pit, he went into the engineering side. My mum, Denise, retrained after bringing me and my brother up to start teaching. They worked hard. They didn’t moan, they just got on with it.”
He worked hard too, at school and then as a player, before studying for a degree and a master’s in sports coaching. He got his coaching badges, then coached and managed at Barnsley, where he helped to develop John Stones, Mason Holgate and Alfie Mawson.
“I was caretaker manager and we got to the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final [in 2016] and on the morning of the game my phone was just messages, messages, messages, people I know, Barnsley fans. All of a sudden they’ve got the Barnsley manager’s number, they’ve never had that before in their life, and the text messages to me were different. That was a big moment of realisation of what a manager is to a football club, not only for the players but the fans.”
Understanding of the manager-owner dynamic was also key. “My first one at Barnsley was Patrick [Cryne], who’s sadly passed away now, a local businessman done well, huge fan of the club. He was a manic depressive but I always knew where I stood. We always got an answer and then I could always protect everyone so it never spilt into performance.”
With Cryne’s health failing, Barnsley were sold in December 2017 to a Hong Kong consortium. “Then I had a global ownership group who you couldn’t get in touch with,” Heckingbottom says. “I learnt a hell of a lot. Then Andrea [Radrizzani] at Leeds, brand-new owner, and with that comes a lot of naivety. That was a challenge for me. I probably speak to him more now.
Understanding of the manager-owner dynamic was also key. “My first one at Barnsley was Patrick [Cryne], who’s sadly passed away now, a local businessman done well, huge fan of the club. He was a manic depressive but I always knew where I stood. We always got an answer and then I could always protect everyone so it never spilt into performance.”
With Cryne’s health failing, Barnsley were sold in December 2017 to a Hong Kong consortium. “Then I had a global ownership group who you couldn’t get in touch with,” Heckingbottom says. “I learnt a hell of a lot. Then Andrea [Radrizzani] at Leeds, brand-new owner, and with that comes a lot of naivety. That was a challenge for me. I probably speak to him more now.
