Tamworth manager Andy Peaks has been forced to choose the FA Cup over a short break with his wife at their Shropshire holiday hideaway.
Instead of spending a relaxing few days away with wife Sarah at their cottage in Bridgnorth, he will be on the other side of the Midlands hoping to oversee Huddersfield Town’s downfall in Friday’s BBC-televised first-round clash at The Lamb.
The 53-year-old splits his role as Tamworth manager with a part-time job as a support worker at Tresham College in Kettering – and he had hoped to head off on a half-term holiday.
But the continued success of the man who lifted the Lambs from the Southern Premier League to the National League in less than two seasons has got in the way.
“We were supposed to be going away Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,” said Peaks, the only manager in the fifth tier not in a full-time role. “But, much to my wife’s disappointment, I’ve had to cancel because football has taken over
“We were going to go to Bridgnorth to the cottage. I was going to do a bit of fishing, a bit of walking and chilling. That’s now on the back burner. It can wait until another day.
“My wife will be here. She’ll be 100 per cent behind me. I’ll make it up to her at some point. Hopefully we can do it on Saturday after victory on Friday night.”
Peaks is proud of the effort he puts in to his part-time job at Tresham College, on the site of the former Kettering Grammar School.
“I’m a support worker at a college for children with high needs, aged 16 to 18,” he added.
“It’s not great money. It’s a learning support role. I go into classes and support and guide. A lot of the kids have had a bad upbringing or have a condition so they’re high needs.
“But it’s very rewarding because a lot of those kids don’t trust you as an adult when you go in, especially as a male support worker.
“You start to win them over and they start to walk around the college looking for you and asking you for advice. It’s a rewarding job and sometimes a good get-out from football.”
Huddersfield, a Premier League side as recently as 2019 and making their first appearance in the first round since losing 4-1 at Paolo Di Canio’s Swindon Town in 2011, are currently seventh in League One after a real up-and-down season.
Four straight wins in all competitions, then seven defeats in eight games – and now another five unbeaten. But that long losing run from late August to early October (broken only by a 4-0 win at Bolton) both began and ended in the Midlands.
It was Walsall who caused them to exit the League Cup and they also lost at League One leaders Birmingham City, so Tamworth can make it a Midlands treble.
The Lambs, 16th in the National League, sit 57 places below Huddersfield in the English football pyramid. But Peaks, whose side beat Robbie Savage’s Macclesfield Town 4-2 in the fourth qualifying round, is quietly confident of an upset.
“There is always a shock in the first round,” he said. “And we’re going to try and make it happen.
“It has worked in a good way because I’ve been able to give it a bit more attention than I normally would. And it would be the biggest achievement of my managerial career.”
