Former Valley player King is crowned as the new manager of Rugby Town

The former Barwell and Coalville Town manager joins Valley after Carl Adams' departure at the weekend, following the 4-0 defeat at Boldmere.

Rugby Town Director Neil Melvin said: "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."

King’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, who turns 50 on Monday, 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 King emerged onto the non-league scene as an 18-year-old midfielder at Butlin Road 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 took charge of first training session on Thursday night, with his first game at Darlaston Town this weekend in the Northern Premier League Midlands.