I LUKE ARMSTRONG

LUKE ARMSTRONG

“I was on absolute pennies and it was costing me almost more to travel to the matches than what I was earning. I was purely there to try to get a kick start in the game.” The honest words from Town’s new striker Luke Armstrong, who just five years ago was travelling hours to train and play part-time football in Scotland’s third division. From rejection after rejection as a trialist to scoring in a National League Play-Off Final which helped secure promotion for Hartlepool. This is Luke Armstrong’s story.

Interview by Henry Whitaker

The son of former Premier League striker Alun Armstrong, who made over 350 professional appearances and scored against Inter Milan in the 2001 UEFA Cup, football was in Luke’s DNA.

The life of a footballer’s son means there’s always a chance you’ll be moving about the country and of course, there’s that “expectation” from peers who just assume you’ll become just as good if not better.

For Armstrong, it was no different but he didn’t join his first until he was 12-years-old. He played for Wolsingham’s junior side up in County Durham for a year before Middlesbrough took interest in the striker.

Their scout Ron Bone saw the raw potential in the youngster and he joined their under 13s academy team. Straight away though, it was a huge shock for Armstrong.

“I remember the early days being really tough and it was a massive step up from where I was before,” Armstrong explains. “I’d gone from scoring six or seven every game finding it easy to moving to an academy and finding it tough. For those first couple years, I wasn’t at the level I need to be at.”

Admitting he was a “small kid”, Armstrong found himself playing for the younger year groups and it wasn’t until under 15s where he began to fill out and believe he was a player worthy of being at Boro’s academy.

That, alongside some dedicated one on one training sessions with his dad, led to Armstrong earning his youth team scholarship, a moment which Armstrong admits got him “a little too excited”.

“I was buzzing,” he says. “As a young kid, I think I probably got a little bit too excited being in and around the first team. We saw them every day and it made you think you weren’t too far away from making that step up but in reality, you’re miles from it.”

At this time, Middlesbrough’s academy had just been recognised as a ‘Category One academy’ - the highest standard. It meant Boro’s youngsters would come up against teams with the same status; the likes of Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal etc…

Armstrong’s team struggled and when his scholarship came to an end, he wasn’t offered a professional deal but Ron Bone told the striker they’d always keep an eye on him, (something worth remembering for later).

Following his release, Armstrong assumed a League Two or even League One club would be straight in for the young attacker. He trialled at so many clubs but it wasn’t working out.

There were players two/three years older than him fighting for that same spot. They were bigger, stronger and more experienced than Armstrong and it made for a tough period.

“ I got sick of the trials, to be honest,” Armstrong confesses. “I remember speaking to my dad at that point saying I wasn’t sure how many more I could take. I was sick of being the new guy walking into the changing rooms. My dad knows football and he was honest with us and said I just needed to play at whatever level I could or find a youth club and work up the pyramid again.” Clark, Birmingham City offered Armstrong a one year deal and a chance. However, just a couple of months after the striker’s arrival, Clark had been sacked and Armstrong was way down the pecking order.

Armstrong admits he was “feeling the pressure” to find a club, wanting to make it as a footballer just like his dad but he makes clear that Alun was happy to support him in whatever career he pursued.

It was a case of if he was going to commit to the dream, expect his dad to be on him to make sure he was doing everything possible.

The next step for Armstrong was to find a club and play football. That came in Scotland’s third division, over three hours away from where he lived.

He played two trial games for Cowdenbeath and signed on but the logistics weren’t right.

Armstrong was “earning pennies” from playing and it was the same if not less than the cost of travel to get to the Eastern part of Scotland. Working at his

dad’s five-a-side centre meant Armstrong would only train once a week, return home at 3 am and then work. Nobody was happy with the situation.

Armstrong left the club by January 2016 and was back on the hunt for another, preferably one a little closer to home. He spent roughly six months on loan at Gateshead but he wanted and needed something permanent.

“Fed up” of the process of trialling, Armstrong joined Northern Premier League Premier Division side Blyth Spartans. It’s where he would spend the 2016/17 campaign and also play under his dad, who took the role of manager in September that season.

A change to a 4-4-2 formation saw Armstrong thrive up top alongside Dan Maguire and the pair helped the Spartans clinch the league title with three games to spare. It would turn out to be a defining moment for Armstrong’s career.

It was his first taste of success in the sport, he’d scored over 20 goals in his debut season and he did it with his dad putting faith in his ability.

“I started loving the game again,” Armstrong smiles. “That season was when I realised I could achieve something when playing games.” The striker, who had struggled to even get a trial with National League outfits was now attracting interest from Football League clubs. It was a crazy scenario.

Remember Middlesbrough scout Ron Bone? Well, he kept his word to Armstrong and had been keeping tabs on the striker. Bone brought Armstrong into Boro’s under 23s setup and he was now a professional footballer.

“I owe a lot to Ron Bone, he was the one who first spotted me and said they’d watch me. You never believe them when they say that but he meant it,” Armstrong adds. “I’d successfully gone and done what they wanted me to do, go and play games.”

It was now 2017, Armstrong was 21-years-old and looking to break into the first team at the Riverside. He’d train and occasionally travel with the first team while Tony Pulis was manager but just didn’t manage to do enough to see his name on the team sheet.

A loan move was the natural next step and Armstrong admits he had to “swallow his pride” and drop down to the National League where he joined Gateshead for six months. Despite having an eight-week layoff due to injury, the striker

Armstrong celebrates opening the scoring for Hartlepool in the National League Play-Off Final against Torquay

managed 11 goals between the start of the season and January and he describes it as his “best season” when evaluating his performances.

It forced the “big change” in Armstrong’s career as suddenly, clubs in League One and League Two wanted to bring the powerful striker in on loan.

Armstrong saw League One side Accrington Stanley as the pick of the bunch and joined them for the second half of the 2018/19 season. It was an up and down spell for Armstrong who was experiencing a completely different level of opposition, playing for a side in a relegation battle.

At the end of the loan, Armstrong had two years left at Boro and had an honest conversation with the at the time manager Jonathan Woodgate. Now 23-years-old, Armstrong wanted game time and Salford City was the club willing to pay a fee to offer that.

Boro believed it would be a great opportunity for Armstrong to be the key man at a club and he believed that as well. He arrived at the Ammies told he would be the player to win them promotion to League One and be the man to continue the journey thereafter. That didn’t happen. being 30 lads,” Armstrong explains. “They filtered out eventually but there were so many to pick from. I pulled my hamstring during my first appearance and it took eight weeks for me to get back to full fitness. I ended up scoring a league goal for them and a couple in the trophies but we weren’t playing very well and I wasn’t seeing much of the ball.”

Rotation in the Salford team saw Armstrong’s chances diminish and by January he’d been frozen out. Two new strikers arrived that transfer window and then Covid hit.

Armstrong returned the following season and started off in the manager’s plans. That was until he was substituted at half time against Exeter, that’s when he knew his time was up.

The striker admits he “didn’t play my best football” while at Salford and didn’t enjoy being that far from his hometown but it was a move that just didn’t work out and in January 2020, he joined Hartlepool on loan.

If his time at Salford is summed up by not enjoying his football and struggling to perform, his spell at Hartlepool would be the complete opposite. Armstrong was told he would get a run of games but he needed to score goals, Hartlepool were relying on him to return to the Football League.

They got on like a house on fire.

“I loved it at Hartlepool, it was exactly what I needed,” Armstrong states. “I’d come from a season where I’d played very little and scored very few so I was asking myself whether I could be the man. I scored two on my debut which was a great start and it was a feeling of relief and joy. Those goals gave me belief that I could do it again and I did. The games were constant Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday but it was great to be back playing games again knowing the belief was there from those around me.”

Between February and May, Pools went on a sixteen game unbeaten run and won eight

First was Bromley and in front of the fans at Victoria Park, Armstrong and his teammates blew away their opponents in the first half. Three goals in seven minutes - one being from Armstrong - looked to have killed the tie but two goals in the second half from Bromley, the latter coming in the 93rd minute, set up for a nervy final few minutes but they got through it.

The next game would be against Stockport County and it was the opposite style of game. Both teams sitting back waiting for the other to make a mistake. A goal from Rhys Oates - now at Mansfield Town - in the 76th minute was the decider and set up a final with Torquay United.

It was a final that will go down in the history books as one of the craziest the National League has seen. Torquay had a goal disallowed very early into the contest before Armstrong opened the scoring 20 minutes in and it looked to have settled the nerves within the stadium.

In the second half, Torquay had another goal disallowed and it looked like the Gods were in Hartlepool’s favour. That was until a header from Torquay’s goalkeeper Lucas Colovan in the fifth minute of added time sent the game to extra time and then penalties. Four straight penalty misses - including Armstrong’s - began the shoot out before the next six hit the back of the net. The game was decided when a good friend of Armstrong and Pools’ keeper Brad James saved Matt Buse’s effort. It was a match like no other and left Armstrong with so many different emotions.

“It was one of the maddest games in my career. Scoring in that game was a feeling on another level, the best I’ve had in my career. The ups and downs were unbelievable. From the lows at Salford to achieving something with Hartlepool and then realising, of course I want to play football for a living. The celebrations that followed were unbelievable. We went back to the hotel with our families and it was just really emotional for everyone. You wouldn’t think a game of football could do that but seeing how proud the families were, it’s what you dream of.”

There was little downtime for Armstrong as he knew a permanent move away from Salford was just around the corner. His destination would be Harrogate Town as Simon Weaver saw the attacker as a great fit for Town’s style of play.

A key thing for Armstrong when choosing Harrogate was that he could see Weaver “believed” in his players. Something the striker knew was so important for himself.

“The way the team plays, nobody wants to play against them. Everyone is fit and plays good football, working hard for every single thing. The team is known for never giving up and the manager believes in players, that’s what I want. People say this is a family club and it really is. The belief we have can take us anywhere so we’ve just got to find a way to keep going. For me, I’m just focusing on each game that comes, that’s all you can do really; do as well as you can each game, reflect on where you can get better and little by little keep on improving.”