Halifax had an overhaul over the summer after a couple of excellent seasons at this level as big players in Lois Maynard, Marc Roberts and Matty Pearson were all snapped up by bigger clubs. Neil Aspin was given a pretty small budget to work it and the specialist in the lower leagues focused his recruitment on players with lots to prove and no experience at this level. It was a big gamble and it soon became abundantly clear that the new team will take a lot of work get competitive at this level. The Shaymen struggled badly in all aspects from pretty much the word go as they collected a single point from the first six games. The lack of gumption and street-wiseness in the side was glaring and it was almost incomprehensible to see such a capable manager like Aspin fail so badly in the aspect of squad-building. The chopping and changing started immediately as loanees arrived to little effect and systems were being switched every week. Results failed to get better in the weeks to come and it became abundantly clear that Aspin has taken the club as far as he can. The marriage between him and the Shaymen was ended by mutual consent in mid-September after a loss to local rivals and newcomer Guiseley, keeping the team second from bottom. The choice for a replacement was a rather odd one in unproven Northern Irishman Darren Kelly, a former coach at Sunderland who was sacked by Oldham very early in the season. He took over with grand plans and bold claims for quick change of fortunes but it soon became clear that this is a job too tough for someone of his calibre. He suffered a humiliating beating by 7:1 to high-flyers Cheltenham on his first game in charge and that proved a harbinger for what was to come in his short but highly damaging tenure. Grimsby became the second team in four games that put seven goals past the hapless Yorkshire side. There was utter resignation and lack of fight in the squad and some decent players like Matty Brown, Hamza Bencherif, Matt Glennon and Kingsley James were looking very much less a sum of their parts. It was almost sad to watch as Halifax kept on digging a deeper hole for themselves, losing five games on the spin to make it 14 losses in the first 20 games of the season. The latest of these was a 6:3 beating at home against Braintree and that proved the last straw for Kelly as he was let go after ten games in charge, having lost nine of them. The experienced Jim Harvey, who was Kelly’s assistant, took charge on caretaker basis and just like that, transformed the fortunes of the club almost completely. A resounding win with ten men away at Gateshead instilled confidence in the ranks and the team would go on to win five and draw three out of the next eight games. It was a quite incredible turnaround and suddenly Halifax were not looking that hapless at the bottom. Central to that revival was the run of form of striker Sean Tuton, a forward who arrived from lowly Buxton at the start of the summer and started scoring without stopping since November. The overall change of formation to three at the back, and the clever use of Tuton along with Jordan Burrow up front, was the main reason for the better results and overall Harvey just seemed to believe in these players despite the numerous setbacks early on. The good run of form was maintained until the end of January, with the team already out of the bottom four by then, but then they started to lose a bit of momentum. Tuton was sold to Barnsley just before the end of January transfer window and his pace and explosiveness was never really replaced. Wins became hard to come by and the team was getting very few wins now. They were still keeping their heads above the water thanks to the odd lucky success, having scored last-minute goals against Southport and Altrincham in March, but the sense of decline in the team was inescapable. Indeed, they lost five out of six games games after Easter and looked in all sorts of trouble before the final three games. But they first drew against Eastleigh and then a shock win away at Forest Green gave them the opportunity to control their fate before the final game of the season. But they could not beat Macclesfield, going agonisingly close at the end of a 1:1 draw, and local rivals Guiseley just about piped them for the final safety spot. Thus, Halifax were back in the Conference North after three seasons and will look back on the absolute dire first third of the season as the main reason for their downfall. But the fans were still given a great last day of the campaign when Halifax stunned a top side like Grimsby for a 1:0 win at Wembley in the FA Trophy.
