Home-grown coaching team ready to lead Lancaster City into the new season

Lancaster City's new season gets under way this Saturday when they travel to Hyde United in the NPL Premier Division.

This will mark the start of manager Jimmy Marshall’s first full season in charge.

Marshall swapped Ebac Northern League side Kendal Town for The Giant Axe when he was appointed manager in April of this year following the departure of Chris Willcock.

The club holds a special connection to him, as he was born and raised in Lancaster, as were his assistant manager Gavin Clark and coach Lee Marshall, who were both with him at Kendal.

The three spoke on Beyond Radio’s Saturday Sport Show about their careers so far and their ambitions for the ‘Dolly Blues’.

The hometown connection isn’t the only one that was linking the club and its new coaching staff before they joined.

Gavin Clark and Lee Marshall had previously represented City in their playing careers, Clark for eight years between 2010 and 2018 and Marshall for two (1996-98).

Reflecting on his playing days and memories at The Giant Axe, Marshall said: “My favourite is probably the debut back in 1996, I’d had a couple of seasons with the reserves before being called up into the first team and I just remember the manager pulling me to one side and I thought he was going to say that I’d be starting on the bench, but he actually said ‘you’re starting at left back, play your natural game’.

“There was no time for nerves, and that was my best memory, stepping out at The Giant Axe.”

Clark said that the club’s most recent promotion in 2017 from the Northern Premier League Division One North, along with an FA Cup victory over Darlington and a regional final against Chorley, rank highly among his fondest memories playing for Lancaster.

Jimmy Marshall lists West Lancashire League sides Caton United and Milnthorpe Corinthians as his other former clubs.

He had a very successful spell at Caton and led Milnthorpe to the West Lancashire League Division One title in 2022, before joining Kendal that same year and helping them stabilise in the ninth tier of English football and then challenge for playoff places.

He took his first junior coaching role aged 17 and worked his way up from there, and coached Scotland international Scott McTominay at an early stage in both their footballing journeys.

Clark also enjoyed a spell as manager of another West Lancashire League side Slyne with Hest, before linking up with Marshall in 2023.

Lee Marshall had previous manager experience at Wyre Villa and Marsh United before joining Caton United under Jimmy as a player, eventually becoming his assistant there and then taking over when Jimmy left, while continuing to play throughout those years and afterwards.

“When you leave a football club, you’ve always got to look at it and think ‘did I improve it?’ and when I look back, I think yes is the answer for all those clubs," said Jimmy.

“We were really proud to be offered the Lancaster City job and it’s one that we’re going to chuck everything into and hopefully be as successful as we can.

“It’s good to have such a close-knit coaching group and lads you can bounce off who know their roles going forward.”

The management team joined Lancaster City at a time when relegation back down to the eighth tier was a real possibility as a series of poor results in February and March had led to a slide down the table.

“It was a tough decision [to leave Kendal Town], we were in a position where it was still possible to get into the [Ebac Northern League] playoffs," said Jimmy.

“I thought, looking from the outside, Lancaster needed a bit of a lift just to get them over the line, they had five games left and they were slipping dangerously close to the drop zone.

“People will have thought ‘why can’t they wait until the end of the season?’ but from our point of view when we discussed it, it was important to get in at that stage - if things had gone badly we would’ve had a relegation on our CV but not for one minute did we think that would happen.

“We knew we needed to get a couple of wins on the board pretty quickly and fortunately we did that.

“The best thing about it was coming in and seeing how the football club works, seeing how the players work and the players seeing how we work and we got a month or two ahead of where we may have been had we come in in the summer.

“From my point of view, we wouldn’t have done anything differently; we wanted to be in the best shape we could be going forward.”

Gavin Clark said: “When your hometown club come in, it’s very attractive and it happened very quickly.

“As a squad, because of when we came in, we’re in a position now where we can kick on.”

Lee Marshall said: “As a junior, growing up living five minutes from the ground, Lancaster City was the place you wanted to be, whether that’s a player, a supporter or on the management side so when the opportunity came along, it was one we couldn’t turn down at the time.”

The Dolly Blues have made a number of signings heading into the new season: firstly, in the goalkeeping department, Brad Kelly has joined from Rochdale as the club’s number one and Will Owen, who last season was Coventry City’s training goalkeeper, will add competition.

Defenders Joe Amison from Holker Old Boys, Charlie Cox who has been snapped up permanently following a strong loan spell from Blackpool and ex-Manchester United, Blackpool and Fleetwood academy prodigy Toby Oliver have arrived at The Giant Axe.

In the midfield, Bobby Bjork once again joins Lancaster on a six-month loan from Ashton United following a shorter spell at the back end of last season, as does young versatile midfielder Jim Craig who joins permanently from Kendal Town and has worked with the management team before, as has forward Steven Yawson.

“To be fair, we were quite pleased by what we’d seen when we came in," said the manager.

“We thought we’d inherited a group of players who were lacking a little bit of belief and needed a bit of confidence instilling into them.

“Right off the bat, we thought we could get more from the current group but whether you’ve been at Lancaster for five games or five years, one thing you’re always doing in the summer is trying to improve the squad, bringing some new blood in to try and lift the competition for places and the levels, giving us a different dynamic.

“We looked at bringing in more energy and pace into the team, having a few more runners.

“Another piece of recruitment was to replace a player who had left [defender Harrison Beeden who joined Gainsborough Trinity], we’ve replaced him with Toby Oliver who we think a lot of.

“I’d like to think that would be the Lancaster way, having players that we can bring in, that can compete at the level first and foremost and do well, but then there’s a food chain in football and if it comes to them being moved on, that’s how it works and we go back round the circle and recruit again.

“Having a year in the Northern League [with Kendal] gave us more contacts in the North East and it always helps with recruitment, you’re looking all over the place.

“The one thing that has changed a lot this summer is that I have started working with agents and the two that I’ve dealt with predominantly have been pretty good.

“You’ve got to be open to everything and keep your eyes and ears open, we’re happy with where the squad is but the one thing we’ve always said is that if someone becomes available to us and they would improve us, we wouldn’t turn that down.”

More than 150 fans were in attendance at an open training session towards the end of July and the management team are delighted to have such a special connection with their supporters.

Average attendances at The Giant Axe have regularly increased season by season, from 310 in 2021-22 to 511 in 2024-25, the first time the average attendance number has gone above 500 in recent years.

Clark said: “It’s brilliant, seeing more faces and that’s exactly what we want to do, bring more local people down and for them to enjoy watching the football.

“You look at our recruitment, we want lads who are a bit quicker and more direct so people can enjoy watching the style of play.”

Lee Marshall said: “With us being local lads, we tended to know that there was a lot of our family and friends watching Lancaster so to see them week in, week out is great, and also people who don’t watch are going to come down and support us as local lads, so the fanbase to us is going to be massive this season.”

Jimmy Marshall emphasised that the management team and staff in general are “passionate” about building the whole football club.

“The amount of people who have been in touch since we took charge, the phones have been going mad.

“We’re local, honest lads, we’ve got no egos, we just try and put the graft in for the football club.

“There’s no better sight as a management team after a win on a Saturday than seeing the players celebrate with the fans, it’s what we want every week.

“We’ve got the club and the city at heart, we know a lot of fans outside of the football club and that might not have been the case with previous managers.

“Events like the open training sessions are an absolute no- brainer for me, it’s great to see everyone down at the club and all the kids.

“It’s like I’ve said on social media, let’s try and get all these kids walking round Lancaster in Lancaster tops and not Manchester United and Liverpool tops.”

In terms of objectives for the club, both on and off the pitch, Marshall says he has a ‘hands-on approach’ when trying to improve the club.

The Dolly Blues’ recent announcement of under 18s and under 23s teams will be crucial to the future of the club.

In addition to this, the club have a thriving junior section of both boys and girls’ teams, a senior women’s team, a military veterans side and weekly walking football sessions, and are always looking for more teams they can set up.

“When we come to a football club, we’ll try and grow it in every aspect, without trying to tread on the toes of the directors - Andy Baker and Amy Evans have been brilliant since we came in, and Charlotte Harkin the secretary, but we think we can bring a bit to the party.

“We’ve got good contacts in local areas so we’re trying to help with sponsorship.

“First and foremost we know that to be able to keep growing we need results on the pitch.

“It’s important we get a first team that are competing and doing well, and at Kendal we introduced an under 23s and an under 18s - the wheels for those teams were already in motion before we came here but it’s really important to us that we have that pathway through from the junior section, to the academy to the first team.

“We’ve got great lads involved running the teams, we went to the presentation for the Lancaster City Juniors at the end of the season and we want to try and get everyone pulling in the same direction and we will be an open book as we do that.”

Clark said: “The foundations are built well, we want the city to be proud of the football club.

“We need to be successful on the pitch because then that translates through the club, we’ve got great pathways that weren’t there when I was growing up.

“It’s just doing additional things to make the football club the hub of the city.”

Pre-season is now complete for the Dolly Blues, with a 2-2 draw with Fleetwood Town’s under 21s on Tuesday night (August 5) rounding off a packed schedule of friendlies which included a 6-0 win over Longridge, a well-contested game against League Two Barrow and a 2-1 victory over AFC Fylde.

They have their final training session on Thursday before the season proper begins this weekend.

Lancaster City’s first Northern Premier League Premier Division game is away to Hyde United at their Project Solar Stadium, before hosting FC United of Manchest