Steve Whitney joins The Southern Football League

From Wednesday 1st July 2020, Steve becomes the League's Media Officer.

The Southern Football League is delighted to announce that Steve Whitney will take over the running of the League website, Twitter and Facebook accounts from Aardvark who have expertly managed those areas for the past three years and helped to grow the League website and Twitter account reach to football supporters enormously. We thank them for their dedicated work ethics and achievements.

Steve has a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge of Non-League football and is a fantastic assist to the Southern Football League.

Playing Career:

Steve joined Swansea City as an apprentice professional in the early 1970s and played for the youth and reserve sides.

After being released, he was signed by Ron Atkinson (who went on to manage Manchester United, West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa) for Kettering Town.

After leaving Kettering in 1974 due to a serious knee injury, he played in the United Counties League for several clubs.

Managing & Coaching:

Steve started managing and coaching back in 1984 with Kettering Town under-18's.

Other clubs included Rothwell Town, Desborough Town and Wellingborough Town as well as being the technical director at the newly-formed AFC Rushden & Diamonds.

He successfully won the Northants Senior Youth League with Rothwell, Kettering, twice with Wellingborough and also won the League Cup on five occasions, the Jaymann Shield three times.

Steve also managed in the United Counties League with Irchester United, taking leading them from bottom of Division One to seventh place in his first season.

Steve was also chairman at Rushden & Higham United for two and a half years as well as being under-18 manager.

In addition, Steve worked for Euroworld Sports looking after and coaching teams from all over the world, including the senior Thailand national squad and teams from the USA, Finland and Australia.

Other Jobs

After being released by Swansea, Steve worked for Wetherby`s in Wellingborough in their racing department until mid-1970s when he joined the Department of Employment in Kettering. Steve went on to the Stamford office and Northampton`s Job Centre before becoming a Training Agent in 1989, helping to re-train adults into new career paths.

He obtained several qualifications during this time, including becoming a qualified counsellor.

Steve won the National Football Programme of the Year award two years in succession in the mid-1980s whilst at Kettering Town.

He began full-time in football journalism as editor of Team Talk magazine in Somerset in early 1991 and then in 1999 as editor of online website Non-League Daily and as a writer for the Non-League Paper which he helped launch along with David Emery and Tony Williams, joining Pitchero to set up Pitchero Non-League in January 2011.

Steve also worked for the National League for 7 years as its media manager and contributed to the National League`s Wembley Promotion Final programmes. He also worked for the Northern Premier League, helping to write their 300-page 50th Anniversary book released in February 2019.

Steve also spent several years with BBC Radio 5 Live`s `The Non-League Show`, hosted by Caroline Barker, given a regular slot for weekly non-League news.