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06
Jan
EXCLUSIVE: Rob Northfield resigns as Harrogate Railway chairman
Harrogate Railway chairman Rob Northfield has resigned following a disagreement with committee members.
Mr Northfield had been in charge for seven months, having joined The Rail for a third time in June.
His return saw a sharp upturn in the semi-professional club's fortunes, with the Starbeck side currently second in a league they finished 12th in last year.
Speaking to the Stray Ferret today (January 6), Mr Northfield blamed his departure on the social side of the club interfering with football matters.
He said:
When I was asked to join, I was assured that the football was totally separate from the social side of the club. It was well meant at the time, but we started to get interference on the football side from the social side. So, I gave them an ultimatum because I couldn’t do what I needed to do.
Mr Northfield, however, declined to go into details of the interference.
Harrogate Railway is split into two sections, the football team and the social club, which are run separately.
The social side runs the clubhouse and is overseen by a committee, which Mr Northfield claims is tampering with the football side.
‘You can’t have interference in a job this hard’
The former chairman added:
I would understand the interference more if we were struggling, but we’re flying. We’re second in the league, we’ve got great players – we’re the envy of probably most teams at our level.
Mr Northfield, who has a background in motivational speaking, has brought success to each of the clubs he has chaired: Harrogate Railway, Guiseley and Tadcaster.
He even helped ex-footballer and manager Martin Allen to improve his man-management skills during his time managing Gillingham and Barnet.
Allen said that winning League Two with Gillingham and winning the National League with Barnet “would not have happened” without Mr Northfield.
Mr Northfield added:
It’s difficult running a football club. You can’t have interference when you’re trying to do a job as hard as this. I know what I’m doing. My 40 years of experience says that you can’t interfere for me to give this club what it deserves.
I wouldn’t go to (co-manager) Rob Youhill and tell him how he should pick his team. I know the team I need around me and don’t need interference.
Mr Northfield insisted that, despite the disagreements, he had not fallen out with the club — and even held out the prospect of a reunion.
“I would go back within five minutes if the committee sent me an email saying they won’t interfere,” he added.
‘We don’t want to burn any bridges’
The Stray Ferret also spoke to Andrew Young, Harrogate Railway’s club secretary, about the situation.
While also not specifying the details of the disagreement, he said only one issue hadn't been resolved, and that there was no negative feeling towards the ex-chairman.
Nevertheless Mr Young disagreed with Mr Northfield’s suggestion that the committee was interfering with football matters:
It’s not true, everyone at the club that Rob has worked with is still here. The social club have zero influence over the football side of things, they just do the running of the social club.
No one wanted Rob to leave. If he came back tomorrow, we’d have him straight away. We’re trying to find a solution to get him back to the club. We’ll sit down in the near future and see where we go from there. We don’t want to burn any bridges.
Should an agreement not be met, though, Mr Young insisted the club would not suffer financially.
Harrogate Railway had a wobble on Saturday, losing 3-0 away to Route One Rovers in the Northern Counties East Football League Division One. But Mr Young insisted the chairman's departure had nothing to do with it.
“They’re two completely separate entities,” he said. “The situation has had absolutely no impact on the team, so last weekend’s performance is not related to it.”
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