It was on a mild autumn night four years ago that Kidderminster Harriers’ Keith Lowe last came up against West Ham United and the then 33-year-old sensed an opportunity when one of the Premier League side’s midfielders pulled up injured after ten minutes.
It didn’t really materialise quite as he’d imagined. Colombian Carlos Sanchez was replaced by a 19-year-old Declan Rice who ran Lowe’s Macclesfield Town side ragged as West Ham ran out 8-0 winners in the League Cup.
‘It was just relentless,’ Lowe reflects. ‘I was pushed on out of defence and played holding midfielder, so I came up against Rice and he controlled everything: spreading passes, winning the ball back, speed, presence, technical ability. And he is a huge physical presence when he’s standing right there in front of you on a pitch like that.’
Centre-back Keith Lowe, 36, is in his third spell at sixth tier outfit Kidderminster Harriers
Robert Snodgrass and Grady Diangana got a couple of goals apiece. Lowe’s side had shipped six goals by the hour mark.
That Lowe should be preparing for another encounter with the same Premier League opposition – Kidderminster meet West Ham in a FA Cup 4th Round tie at Kidderminster’s distinctive Aggborough Stadium on Saturday lunchtime – is testament to his extraordinary attachment to the seventh tier club, whom he has left and re-signed for three times now.
They were his lifeline when a formative academy career at Wolves didn’t work out.
They were virtually doomed to drop to the National League North when he left League Two York City to re-join them eight years later.
They were trying to rebuild from something close to financial ruination when he returned yet again last year to the distinctive sights of their little stadium – including the pub within the ground and the Severn Valley Steam Railway which runs behind one of the stands. ‘You often see the steam go up during a game,’ Lowe relates.
Lowe (left) in action for Macclesfield Town against West Ham in the League Cup four years ago
The third homecoming to the former carpet manufacturing town, half an hour south of Lowe’s native Wolverhampton, seems to have been the most special, given the existential struggle that the National League North have had these past few years.
When current owner Richard Lane took over in 2019, he discovered a rabbit warren of debts that no one had told him about. ‘I had people knocking on the door, saying: “I’ve got a loan agreement here for £50,000, or £100,000 there,’ Lane relates. ‘Everything was coming out of the woodwork. It took our lawyers months to bottom it out and we just cut costs where we could. I had to ask: “Do we really need these big names. Is that what the crowds want?”’
Lane dispensed with the notion of a proven manager when he had parted company with John Pemberton. Club midfielder Russ Penn stepped up to do the job instead, on the basis of what Lane calls ‘a gentleman’s agreement’, with Jimmy O’Connor, another of the team’s former experienced players, assisting him.
For reasons that Lowe can’t entirely define, it’s clicked.
‘They’ve created the kind of atmosphere and spirit that I’ve not really known in the game,’ the 36-year-old says. ‘It’s about community and spirit and everyone being involved. Perhaps the struggle’s been part of it. It’s almost a desperation we now have to do well.’
Kidderminster caused an upset by knocking out Championship side Reading in the third round
Perhaps a pinch of mild indignation, too, if the FA Cup 3rd Round win over Reading was anything to go by.
The Carpetmen – the nickname recalls days when manufacturers like Brintons and Tomkinson employed hundreds here – could have badly used the revenues from their game being televised. Games likes Manchester United v Aston Villa were broadcast instead.
No-one’s overlooking Kidderminster Harriers, now. A clip of Penn in the dressing room after the 2-1 win over Reading went viral. The BBC will televise Harriers, the lowest ranked side left in the tournament, reprising their 1994 5th Round clash with West Ham at the Aggborough, which the Hammers won 1-0 through a Lee Chapman goal.
On Wednesday morning at 9am, Lane, who runs a substantial IT business based in the town, was at the stadium to overlook what the club are calling ‘the commercials’: inventive ways of squeezing the last drops of revenue out of this opportunity.
‘We’re looking for space on walls which could make advertising space,’ Lane says. ‘Revisiting old advertising boards that are dormant and not relevant, looking at whether there are new space somewhere on our shirts for sponsors.’
Former Kidderminster midfielder Russ Penn was appointed manager in February 2020
The need is acute because, despite the allure of the tie, the costs of staging it will not make Harriers wealthy.
Much of the £110,000 in TV money will go on hiring four or five times the usual security numbers and other extra staffing. They’re second-guessing the volumes of beer, crisps and soft drinks they’ll need. They ran out of beer for one of the earlier rounds.
How dearly a club like this would covet a replay at the London Stadium, where the kind of revenues kick in that would stabilise them for four or five years and see off the obvious additional commercial turbulence that the pandemic has brought.
But that prospect has been removed by the decision to axe 3rd and 4th Round replays this season. ‘That decision didn’t really do clubs like ours any favours,’ Lane says.
There’s an emotional significance to next weekend for him. He was introduced to Harriers by his late father ‘Rocky’ Lane – a one-time carpet company production director who became a director of the club in 1986 and took that nickname because he was known as an uncompromising figure in amateur sport. He always declined gloves when batting for the factory cricket team.
Father and son watched the 1994 West Ham tie together. ‘I just remember our pitch being bloody awful,’ Lane says, grinning at the memory.
Aggborough Stadium, which holds little over 6,000, is preparing for another huge cup tie
‘It had been a wet winter. We must have gone to the local beach, seeing as how much sand they used to dry it out. But what an incredible atmosphere.’
Most people in this town prefer to talk about the 2-1 3rd Round win at Birmingham City that season. Lane and his father were right behind Jon Purdie’s sublime winner when it sailed in.
For manager Penn, a member of the Kidderminster side who lost 2-0 at Coventry City in the 2007 3rd Round, Saturday is another staging post on the club’s return from the desolation of relegation to the National League North four years ago.
He likes to think he’s got them playing good stuff. ‘We’re dynamic going forward but we’ve got the second best defence in our league,’ he says. ‘We’ll try to get forward and play quick in the tie but we’ll respect the level,’ he says of next weekend’s task.
‘Above all we’re desperate to make it back to the National League because that last relegation was a dagger to the heart,’ says Lowe.
‘But for one weekend we’ll have this tie and everything that goes with it. I suppose that last game I played against them shows that we’ll have to be on top of everything. A side like West Ham have that professionalism and ruthlessness. And they have Declan Rice!’