For a manager that had to conduct Luton training sessions among complaining dog walkers, John Still knows more than most that the Hatters’ phoenix-from-the-ashes story is almost like a work of fiction.
While the current 2020 board of directors – all fans – saved the club from the brink of extinction in 2008, the former boss is credited as the man that kick-started Town’s Renaissance on the pitch.
Still steered Luton back to the Football League in 2014, ending five years in the non-league following a draconian 30-point penalty that effectively relegated the club for the wrongdoings of previous owners.
That promotion was the springboard to back-to-back promotions and a return to the Championship – where the off-the-pitch problems had begun – a year earlier than the aptly named 2020 board had envisaged when they forged a plan for their club’s survival and recovery.
In his second spell as boss, Nathan Jones masterminded the Great Escape to avoid the trap door and then established Town as a top-six Championship club. Then when he left in November for Southampton, Rob Edwards seamlessly took the baton and ran with it all the way to a third-place finish and now to the play-off final at Wembley against Coventry.
Come Saturday evening, Luton could be a Premier League side and everything in 2020’s progression plan – where Luton have finished in a higher league position for seven consecutive seasons – has built to a moment which, if successful at Wembley, would be unparalleled in English football.
The club has continued to evolve off the pitch too, with top-class training facilities at The Brache. And, in a few years’ time, the much-loved, but 118-year-old Kenilworth Road will be vacated for their brand-new Power Court stadium in the centre of town.
But back when Still was engineering the start of a stunning decade, he remembers Luton life wasn’t so luxurious when they trained at Ely Way in Leagrave.
He said: “The training ground, people could walk round the outside. You’d be training and people would be walking their dogs round the outside of the training ground.
“I remember one occasion when someone started complaining that the ball hit their dog, that’s seriously how it was, now it’s completely different, but that’s how it was.”
It puts into perspective how quickly Luton, guided by 2020, have turned things around that the club could be playing in a league against the likes of Erling Haaland, who probably couldn’t even conceive of preparing for games amid the distraction of dog walkers.
Asked if he could have imagined, back when he was in the hotseat, that Luton could be potentially 90 minutes away from the Premier League, Still said: “No, it’s one of those things, if someone had told you a story of it or you saw it on the TV, that would be fiction, and it can’t happen that quick, but it’s fact and it has happened that quick.
“That’s due to the hard work of lots of people at this club. The board of directors need an unbelievable amount of credit to have had that vision that they had when they made 2020, when they made the club again.
“And to have done it that quick, it’s not luck, that’s unbelievable hard work, good decision making by a group of people that have put this club to the forefront of their lives and they deserve every credit for that.”
Though he’s been away from the club for eight years, Still continues to be revered by Hatters fans. He was given the honorary freedom of Luton in 2015, and he revealed he gets reminders of his role in Town’s revival from supporters in some of the most unlikely places.
He said: “I’m a funny sort of person. I came here and did my job, that’s how I’ve always been. I came here, they wanted me to get promotion and I did it, so I feel like when I left here, I felt like I did my job, someone else is going to pick the baton up and they’ve got to do their job.
“When I was on holiday, I wasn’t even at my own place in Cyprus, I was somewhere else in Portugal and I was in this bar and there was only one other person in there.
“It was quite late at night and I’d been with someone and thought I’d have a quick one (drink) here before I’d go back to where I was staying, and he looked over the bar and he went, ‘I’m a Luton supporter’.
“I thought, there’s no-one else here, and I ended up having another hour with him and he was saying to me, ‘if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be in Div One’.
“So, I know, I’m not stupid, I know I played a part and maybe in my own sort of way, gave them something someone else has picked up on and picked up on and picked up on.
“So, yes, I know I’ve played a part, but for me, I’ve played a part that I was brought here to do. I’m happy to be a part of an unbelievable story.”
