Victor Lewis "Vic" Halom (born 3 October 1948 in
Burton upon Trent
Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. In United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011, it had a ...
,
Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
) is a former
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...
Biography
Playing career
Halom featured as a player most prominently for
Sunderland
Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...
and
Oldham Athletic
Oldham Athletic Association Football Club is a professional football club in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, which competes in the National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system.
The history of Oldham Athletic ...
. He played as centre forward in the Sunderland team that won the FA Cup in 1973. Having only joined the club 3 months earlier, he scored important goals in the fifth round replay against
Manchester City
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
and the semi-final against
Arsenal
An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...
.
Coaching career
Halom moved into management in the early 1980s managing
Bergsøy IL in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
. He later achieved great success with
Barrow taking them back into the
Vauxhall Conference in 1983–84. This led to him being appointed
Rochdale
Rochdale ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, at the foothills of the South Pennines in the dale on the River Roch, northwest of Oldham and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough ...
manager at the end of the season. Halom began with a mass clear out, many of the incomers being ex-Oldham players. The side struggled to gel at first but things markedly improved when the under-performing record signing
Les Lawrence
Leslie Oliver Lawrence (born 18 May 1957) is an English former footballer who played as a forward. He scored 105 goals in 395 league and cup games during a twelve-year career in the Football League, most of which was spent in the Fourth Div ...
was sold and replaced by proven goalscorer
Steve Taylor
Roland Stephen Taylor (born December 9, 1957) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, music executive, film maker, assistant professor, and actor. A figure in what has come to be known as Christian alternative rock, Taylor enjoyed ...
late in 1984. For the next ''calendar'' year Rochdale showed promotion-winning form and earned a third round
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...
tie with
Manchester United
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
.
Immediately after that the team went into steep decline not helped by the disastrous signing of
David Mossman who moved on at a loss after less than ten games At the end of the season despite Rochdale having escaped re-election by one point Halom was retained but told by chairman
Tommy Cannon
Thomas Derbyshire (born 27 June 1938), known professionally as Tommy Cannon, is an English comic, actor and singer. He is best known as the straight man of the comic double act Cannon and Ball, until Bobby Ball's death in 2020, in TV programm ...
to try to sell those players under expensive contracts. This seriously weakened the side and after Taylor was sold in October 1986 the club had sunk to bottom of the League by December. Halom was sacked and after being disillusioned with the politics in football never managed a League club again.
In 1992, he stood as a
Liberal Democrat
Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties usually follow a liberal democratic ideology.
Active parties
Former parties
See also
*Liberal democracy
*Lib ...
candidate for
Sunderland North in the 1992 General Election but finished third.
References
External links
Vic Halomat SoccerBase Database
a
Post War English & Scottish Football League A – Z Player's Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Halom, Vic
1943 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Burton upon Trent
Sunderland A.F.C. players
Oldham Athletic A.F.C. players
Barrow A.F.C. managers
Rochdale A.F.C. managers
Burton Albion F.C. managers
Newcastle United F.C. non-playing staff
Association football forwards
English football managers
English footballers
FA Cup Final players