Ian King Becomes New Valley Boss

Rugby Town Football Club is pleased to welcome Ian King as the new first team manager.

The 49-year-old former Barwell and Coalville Town manager joins Valley following Carl Adams' departure at the weekend.

Rugby Town Director Neil Melvin said of the appointment: "We are delighted to welcome Ian to the club.

"He has built up many years of coaching and managerial experience and has done extremely well in recent seasons at a higher level.

"He knows the club well already and we're hoping he can hit the ground running but the primary objective for everyone is to lift ourselves out of the relegation zone as quickly as possible."

Ian's managerial experience has almost exclusively been with Southern League Premier clubs which started with Stratford Town in 2021 when he took over from Tim Flowers.

Following that he guided Barwell to an excellent eighth-placed finish in 2023 before taking on the reins at Coalville earlier this year before the Ravens decided to drop down out of the Southern League.

King said of his new role: "I know it's absolutely going to be a big challenge, but I can't wait to get started on it.

"The run of results recently has clearly been poor and that is bound to have had an effect on the players' confidence, so it's up to us to rebuild that as quickly as we can and make ourselves more difficult to beat and hopefully develop things on from there.

"It's not going to happen overnight, but we believe that we can turn things round and move back up the table.".

Rugby-born Ian emerged onto the non-league scene as an 18-year-old midfielder at Butlin Road over 30 years ago when he helped guide Valley to promotion from the Southern League Midland Division scoring 21 league goals.

Ian made 51 appearances for Rugby scoring 26 goals across three spells for the club including two further short spells in 2002 and 2004.

King continued: "I have always had a strong affiliation to this club and the area, and I still live locally.

"I used to watch the team as a kid and I enjoyed my time playing here as an 18 year-old and again later in my career."

Ian will be joined by former Coventry City full back Brian Borrows as his assistant. Brian has worked together with Ian at both Barwell and Coalville recently.

King will take his first training session tonight with his first game at Darlaston Town this weekend in the Northern Premier League Midlands: "From what I've been told and seen of the games played so far, the priority is to bring some more structure and organisation into the team, and that's what we will be working on in training from tonight.

"Everyone in the squad will get the opportunity to show us what they are capable of and what they are about."

"We've got three games in close succession now, so that should show us whether we need to make any changes to the squad in the New Year, but hopefully the lads we have here now will buy into what we are trying to achieve and we can start to make the progress we need to stay in this league."

King's coaching experience also includes a management spell with Daventry Town in 2017/18 as well as coaching roles with Leamington, Bromsgrove Sporting and Worcester City.

A former Aston Villa trainee in his playing days Ian signed for Stoke City from his first spell with Rugby before featuring for a host of top non-league league sides such as Rushden and Diamonds, Nuneaton Borough, Telford United, Aylesbury United, Stevenage Borough and Kettering Town before spending a chunk of time in Australia.