Club Focus: Huntingdon - Town boss is Revelling on the Hunt for success

When Huntingdon Town manager Laurence Revell was installed in March, his brief was stark: avoid relegation and maintain step six status at any cost.

Now he is leading a revival at the club which sees it firmly in the top half of United Counties Division One.

Back in March, Revell needed to arrest a slide which saw Town languishing one place off the bottom of the table and without a win in six months.

Chairman Doug McIlwain warned that relegation to step seven would throw the club’s whole future into doubt.

Just before lockdown the manager was convinced a tide had been turned as he oversaw Town’s first win in 23 games.

That positive momentum has continued this season. Huntingdon have secured four wins and held league leaders Long Buckby to a draw, ending the league leaders’ five-game winning streak.

“Huntingdon is a really big town, and it deserves a club in a decent level of football,” Revell told NLP. “We want to play an attacking brand of football that people want to come and watch.”

In his playing career, Revell turned out more than 500 times for Potton, Eynesbury Rovers and Royston, before later taking over the reins as manager at Potton. His first job on arriving at Jubilee Park was to build confidence among his squad and break a losing habit.

His aim now is to stabilise Town in the top half of the league so they can mount a challenge for promotion next year. He is keen to return the club to the winning ways they enjoyed almost a decade ago when Huntingdon were crowned Division One champions in 2011-12 and later finished Premier Division runners-up in 2013-14. That period also saw notable cup success and crowds of around 300.

“We want to try and get it back to the days when Huntingdon was seen as a really good local club for good local players to go to. That's really what we want to get back to, engaging with the local community and bringing the local people back to their football club, because when you look at the size of the town, there's no reason really why they should have a club so low down the football pyramid.”

If the end of last season was about firefighting, Revell has spent pre-season building a new squad. Despite a setback in the local derby against Whittlesey and an away defeat to Birstall last weekend, he thinks the side has huge potential.

“It's a new team, we’re gelling together, so there’s a lot of new situations for this team to get used to. There are still players that we're looking at and when we come up against the likes of Whittlesey and Long Buckby, they've got squads that have been together for a long period of time. You can really see that already they've got that bond. They know where each other are going to be on the pitch, whereas we're still learning that.

“We’re very much a team that's in its infancy. But that will come throughout the season. We'll get better once we know our strengths and our weaknesses.

Huntingdon have recently signed striker Aaron Murrell from Newport Pagnell, a player who scored more than 30 goals while Revell was in charge at Potton.

“He’s a player with a known pedigree,” said Revell. “It’s a sign of our intent to get the club up the league.”

The manager is determined to build on existing local talent through the club’s Rowdies youth set-up and harness emerging youngsters in the area.

“If you want to sustain football at the club, we need the best players locally. There’s a lot of good players around the area. We want them to come to Huntingdon Town and rather than travel to St Neots, St Ives or Kettering, they actually come and play for Huntington and enjoy the football here.”

Attendances so far this season have averaged between 50 to 60 people with 75 watching the derby against Whittlesey.

“We want to get attendances up and we want the people of Huntingdon to come and watch their local team, hopefully with local players in it.

“But you’ve got to play a brand of football that people want to come and see. You've got to be up there [in the league] and want to be entertaining people.”

He hopes that those who have been unable to watch professional football during the pandemic and have been drawn to non-league football will return in future.