A young Fermanagh man was thrown into the deep end on Saturday, by being appointed Caretaker Manager of National League team, Halifax Town, after the manager, Neil Aspin was sacked.

It meant that Gareth McClelland had to take charge of the home match against Southport, which ended in a 2-2 draw. This came after just one win in 11 previous matches.

Gareth, originally from the Aghavea area near Brookeborough, where his parents, Albert and Hazel live, is Chief Scout at the part-time club but is also head of PE at a school in Stockport.

On Tuesday night, Gareth was in charge again for his second successive home match against Gateshead at Halifax’s stadium, The Shay and he was delighted with the performance in the 1-1 draw.

“Obviously you’re always after a performance and a result and we certainly got the performance and created endless amounts of opportunities. We had the penalty miss, the two goals disallowed - on another night it could definitely have been three points. But the attitude of all the players was excellent,” he said after the game.

Next up is a trip to London to play Welling this weekend.

Gareth has been in charge of recruitment at the club for four years and some of the players at Halifax have gone on to teams much higher than the Conference League such as Jamie Vardy, now with Leicester City and Mark Roberts with Cambridge United.

Gareth said the sacking of Neil Aspin was a shock to him as he had got Gareth involved in the Club about four years ago.

He explained that the Club’s aspiration is to return to the football league again. There have been good performances in previous seasons, finishing ninth last season and fifth the year before that.

The Shay is a modern stadium able to accommodate around 15,000 spectators and they have had attendances this season of around 8,000 at home matches.

Gareth expects his caretaking role to finish after this weekend’s match when a manager is expected to be appointed. However he will take great interest in the FA Cup next Monday to find out who Halifax’s opponents will be. In previous seasons they have played Bradford City and Charlton.

Gareth (33) and his partner, Lydia, have a two and a half year old son, Theo, who suffers from retinal dystrophy, nystagmus and high myopia and is currently raising funds so they can meet specialists from the Family Hope Center in the USA.