{"id":155784,"date":"2025-11-23T18:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/155784\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T18:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:17:08","slug":"tributes-after-record-breaking-football-boss-roly-howard-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/155784\/","title":{"rendered":"Tributes after record-breaking football boss Roly Howard dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rumeana JahangirNorth West<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Roly Howard managed Marine FC across three decades<\/p>\n

Tributes have been paid following the death of Roly Howard, whose 33-year tenure in charge of the Merseyside club Marine AFC saw him gain a world record at the time for being the longest-serving football manager.<\/p>\n

He managed the Crosby-based team for 1,975 games between August 1972 and April 2005 and even worked as a groundsman for the club.<\/p>\n

The current team, which competes in the National League, held a minute’s silence before Saturday’s game after Howard died at the age of 90.<\/p>\n

Marine chairman Paul Leary told BBC Radio Merseyside<\/a>: “He was a hero because for 33 years of his life, he gave 100% of everything to Marine and he was successful.” <\/p>\n

During his time at the club, he won five league titles and 15 cup competitions.<\/p>\n

He also nurtured football stars including Liverpool and Republic of Ireland player Jason McAteer, who started in Marine’s youth set-up.<\/p>\n

\"MarineMarine FC<\/p>\n

Marine FC players held a minute’s silence in tribute to Roly Howard before Saturday’s game<\/p>\n

In addition to his club work, Howard was also a window cleaner, whose clients included former Liverpool boss Sir Kenny Dalglish.<\/p>\n

Speaking before his final game as manager<\/a> in 2005, the then 70-year-old said: “When you are doing it, it doesn’t feel like that length of time. But like life itself, when you reflect on it you wonder where the time has gone.” <\/p>\n

He was inspired to become Marine’s groundsman after seeing the then Stockport manager Eric Webster mowing the grass at their ground.<\/p>\n

“I asked him what he was doing and he said ‘They never sack the groundsman’. So I looked after the ground for five or six years as well.”<\/p>\n

He earned a place in the Guinness World Records<\/a> as the longest-serving football manager.<\/p>\n

At his final Marine game as manager, he said: “The involvement and the craic with the players is what I’ll miss most. But I always said I would know the time is right and it is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rumeana JahangirNorth West BBC Roly Howard managed Marine FC across three decades Tributes have been paid following the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-155784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}