Sip Media sponsor news: Q&A with Horbury Town FC manager Darren Barnes
Sports News Blitz will be match sponsors for ambitious football club Horbury Town FC throughout September and October 2024.
Co Founders Simon Wilkes and Matt Dudley visited the Slazenger Sports and Social Club with social media and marketing guru Olly Wilson on September 17 - and watched on as Horbury put on a show to beat Tadcaster Albion 1-0.
Sip Media Solutions Managing Editor Wilkes grilled first-team manager Darren Barnes before the match kicked off - and this is hopefully the start of an ongoing partnership.
Here’s the full question and answer session:
SW: “Tell us what your role is at the club and what you do?”
DB: “My role at the club is first-team manager. I started off as a player, then reserve manager, then first-team manager - I’m in my ninth season and am also co-chairman of the club.
“I’ve been at the club for 18 years but heavily involved in management in some way or form for the last sort of 15 years.”
SW: “You've obviously invited us here as match sponsors and our social media team are going to get some nice shots - but why should people come and watch Horbury Town - what's the pull for them?”
DB: “I feel like Horbury Town is a club on the up in the non-league scene - we're very family-orientated, we're very welcoming and we've received a lot of good feedback over the last two to three years since we got to this level.
“I feel like for the level of football that we're at, it's very entertaining, very welcoming - and we have a lot of ambition about what we're trying to achieve.
SW: “Touching on entertaining - what sort of style of play is Horbury’s football?”
DB: “It has always been to play football - we've got some of the best coaches at the club at this level of football by a long stretch and we've always played a lot of football.
“It has been entertaining - it has been attacking and on the front foot. We've always scored a lot of goals and created a lot of chances. I don't think anyone can doubt that when they've come to watch us.
“I think the difference this season is we've also created a big brick wall in front of our goalkeeper. I mean we're actually currently top in the league in the country at Step 6 for defence - we've kept seven out of nine clean sheets so we are currently top in the clean sheets and defensive record for Step 6 in the country so that's something we've never previously had.
“We're still scoring goals but we've also locked out the opposition which is really pleasing.
SW: “You've clearly got big ambitions for the club - what's the end goal? What's the vision on the horizon?”
DB: “I've always been very big on building an environment at the club where you want to come to Horbury, and you want to play and be involved with the club
“Facility wise, everything we're doing over the next two three years is a Step 4 requirement. We're not there yet - we're two or three years off that - but being at Step 6, my goal is to get us to Step 4.
“It was a fantastic achievement to get to Step 6. The fact we are here and competing at the top end is a great achievement for Horbury Town as a club.”
SW: “We've talked about the fans - what about sponsors. You're clearly looking for more sponsorship - what's in it for sponsors that might be watching this video and thinking we want to get involved?”
DB: “A lot of money has been spent on the facility from a handful of people. We've got a good core group of volunteers and a few sponsors along the way.
“But we really need to have more people involved in that aspect of it because what we do is clearly being pumped into the facility for what we've done in the last three years.
“If we can have people buying into the vision of Horbury Town, it's a fantastic town with a population of 12-13,000 people - and I'm really driven to make this succeed.
“So are the volunteers that are involved so if we can just get a handful more people wanting to push us along it'll just speed up what we're trying to achieve.”
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