Celebrations have been ongoing in Harrogate for the past few weeks. The spa town in Yorkshire, famed for its quaint tearooms, is home to a number of Leeds United supporters groups and fans of the Whites have been in party mood since the club won promotion back to the Premier League last month.

Harrogate is not a major football town. It is more a place where footballers live as it’s considered the most expensive place to live in the north of England. England manager, Gareth Southgate, former Leeds greats Danny Mills, George Graham and David O’Leary have all settled in the area. Current Leeds manager, Marcelo Bielsa, also lived at the town’s five-star Rudding Park hotel before opting for something a little less grand.

The town lies only 15 miles away from the urban conurbation of Leeds city centre, but the atmosphere between the two settlements could not be starker. Harrogate has always been in the shadow of large and loud Leeds but on Sunday evening the few thousand who call Harrogate Town their club had their own right to cheer.

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Harrogate secure promotion

Beneath the Wembley arch, Simon Weaver’s men beat Notts County 3-1 to clinch promotion into League Two. In the club’s 106 year history, they have never played in the football league. Their home attendances rarely reach 1,000 whilst their pitch is artificial, which will have to be ripped up and relaid with turf to abide with EFL regulations, but for the first time this small Yorkshire club are not non-league.

Harrogate only went professional in 2017, up until that point they were semi-pros, training when they could around their better-paid full-time jobs. Weaver answered a newspaper advert for the management role in 2009 when he was just 31 and has not looked back since. It was only two years after Weaver joined the club that his father, Irving, the millionaire owner of Strata Homes, bought it. This is a family affair but with a difference.

I’m so proud of him,” Weaver said of his father, who has aimed to develop a club that the locals will want to support and be proud of. “It’s been some journey.”

Weaver has spent over a quarter of his life managing Harrogate, but the best is yet to come. Goals from George Thomson, Connor Hall and Jack Diamond prevented Notts County from making an immediate return to League Two - the newest football league club halted the oldest. It means that Harrogate will face the likes of Bolton Wanderers and Bradford City next season. Weaver, who is the longest serving manager in the professional game in England, will be aiming to test his capabilities against wisened non-league clubs and former football league staples.

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“I’ve effectively managed two clubs,” Weaver said prior to Sunday’s play-off final. “Going professional in 2017 totally relaunched Harrogate Town. It allowed us to train full-time, but more importantly it allowed us to create a vision of what we wanted to see on the pitch: Young, aspirational individuals transforming the club. Doing that forged an identity that took us to the next level.”

There is a special ethos at the club

Harrogate the club has long mirrored Harrogate the town: laid-back and with a nice image. Theirs is a small fanbase that will stick with them, moving up a division will boost revenues but spectators at the stadium - when allowed - will not swell more than 2,000. There is a sense that Harrogate know what they are and want to stay as they are. Becoming a football league club will not change their ethos.

For the Leeds supporters who call the town home, they will not sway from their club, who will play in the Premier League next season for the first time in 16 years. But there is hope that the two clubs can supplement each other.

I really hope that we can continue to work together,” Weaver continued. “We’re not in competition with Leeds United; we’re on different levels. But we can bring through youngsters, we give them minutes and we like to think that we’re a mini-Leeds – energy, hunger, fast pressing. We’re not a Sunday league side anymore, and we’re only just down the road. It can work hand-in-hand.”

Together in motion: Leeds ascend a division and so do Harrogate - Yorkshire on the rise.

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