Morecambe reap benefit of Harvey's full commitment

Conference team would be talk of the town if they beat Ipswich. Simon Turnbull meets a manager making a difference

They are doing a good job of making a name for themselves at Morecambe Football Club. For the time being, there is still little chance of them featuring in the national spotlight without mention being made of the man who took the town's name for his own. But the men from Christie Park are making promising progress, as Eric Bartholomew – to use the name by which the Comedian of the Century was known in his youth – would have been the first to applaud. The future Mr Morecambe did, after all, live at 32 Christie Avenue, directly behind the North End goal at Christie Park.

For the second time in three seasons, Morecambe have made it to the third round of the FA Cup. On Saturday they travel to Portman Road to measure just how far they have come in the past two years. Ipswich were their third-round opponents in the 2000-01 season. The Shrimps lost 3-0 at Christie Park but acquitted themselves well against a team swimming with the big fish at the time.

"They were third in the Premiership, I think," Jim Harvey, the Morecambe manager, reflected. "They scored after about 10 minutes, which was a softish one on our part, but they didn't get the second one until about 65 minutes and we gave them a good game up until then. In the first half they were quite concerned about the way things were going. Jim Magilton told me a couple of months later that George Burley had given them quite a roasting at half-time.

"At that time they were playing marvellous football. They were really on top of their form. They've still got a lot of the same players, though obviously they've taken a bit of a dip since then. Their football's still not bad. They're just having problems scoring goals and getting results. We've improved quite a bit since then. We're actually full-time now."

Morecambe, in fact, have been full-timers in the Conference for almost a year now. It is a measure of the progress they have made under Harvey's astute direction and of the ambition they have acquired along the way. They entered the Christmas period lying fifth in the Conference table. Their ultimate goal is to put Morecambe on the Football League map.

"The Football League is very much the target," Harvey said. "We could certainly sustain a Football League club. We've had crowds of 5,000 and 6,000 for Conference games, and in the Football League there would be the attraction of better opposition and more away fans. It doesn't matter where you are; if you have a team that's successful, people will come and watch. And Lancashire is a good area for football support. I don't think it'll ever be like Newcastle. We don't have that density of population. But certainly in the Football League we could sustain a team."

It is a measure of Harvey's managerial ability that Morecambe are even contemplating the step up to Nationwide status. They were a lowly Northern Premier League club with six-figure debts when he succeeded Leighton James as manager in June 1994. With no money to spend on players, he developed an academy – helped by the experience he gained in the final year of his playing career, which he spent combining coaching duties in Dario Gradi's nursery at Crewe.

"I certainly picked up a lot during that year with Dario," Harvey acknowledged. "When I turned up at Morecambe we got promoted in the first year and financially we were a long way behind the competition. I couldn't afford the calibre of player that I needed to compete. I had to try and develop my young players, and obviously coming from Crewe and seeing how it worked there it was easy to fall into that way of working."

Harvey is still reaping the rewards of his academy, through which the majority of Morecambe's first-team players have graduated. His job has also been helped by the club's acquisition of Peter McGuigan in the boardroom. The Morecambe chairman is the owner of Umbro and a wealthy man.

It also appears to be of benefit to Harvey that he combines his managerial duties in the Conference with a coaching role at international level. For the past three years he has been working as Sammy McIlroy's part-time assistant with the Northern Ireland team. "It breaks up the routine, I suppose," Harvey said. "But the other aspect is you work with better-quality players – a lot of them in the Premier League, at the top of their profession. Equally, because of the opposition that you play against, tactically you have to be sharper and brighter – and you're competing against some of the best players in the world. So to try to organise your side to overcome that is all very, very good experience."

Harvey also has experience of playing for his country, albeit at Under-21 level. He was also picked for Northern Ireland senior squads by Danny Blanchflower and Billy Bingham but was never called into action. It probably would have been different had he joined Southampton rather than Arsenal from Glenavon in 1977. As it was, Harvey spent three frustrating seasons on the fringes at Highbury, making just four first-team appearances as a young midfield Gunner before moving on to Hereford and thence to Bristol City, Tranmere and Crewe.

At 44, he is making a growing name for himself as a manager. All he needs is his team to beat Ipswich and draw Millwall in the fourth round and the national spotlight will be turned on full glare. Yes, it would certainly be a headline act: Jim Harvey's Morecambe against Dennis Wise.