BRIAN Flynn knew from an early age he wanted to stay in football after his career had ended.

By 29 he had done his coaching badges but his first job in management came about as he was in the right place at the right time.

Winding down his playing days with Wrexham, Flynn was at the club when Dixie McNeil resigned and the chairman Pryce Griffiths turned to the former Burnley midfielder to take over.

Fourteen years later Flynn left Wrexham having gone down in history as one of their greatest managers of all-time.

He wasn’t the only Turf Moor link in those successful years, as he brought Kevin Reeves in as his assistant.

Flynn said: “I knew Kevin from Burnley, I think he was John Bond’s first signing and he soon became a friend but unfortunately he retired early through injury.

“He took up coaching and we kept in touch, he went to Birmingham coaching and then when I went to Wrexham I managed to persuade him to come and be first-team coach with us.”

During the Wrexham years Flynn continued to live in Burnley with his wife Liz – who had reservations about his first steps into management.

“My wife didn’t want me to do it because I had a really good job with the PFA,” added Flynn.

“I was working on the community scheme. I was based out of Manchester and it was a job for life if I wanted it.

“Wrexham came about and Liz said ‘Don’t do it Brian, don’t do it’.

I said ‘Well, in 20 years they’ve had four managers, so simple arithmetic tells you you’ll get five years.’ I thought I’d give it a go.

“The chairman said I’ll give you a two-year contract.

“I said ‘I’d like a three year contract chairman and would prefer a five.’ “We started with a two year contract and then we didn’t bother about contracts after that.”

In the early days of Flynn’s tenure it was about survival as the club teetered on the brink. In the 1990/91 season Wrexham knew no team would be relegated from the bottom division so Flynn took the chance to blood youngsters into his side.

They finished bottom.

The following season, Wrexham improved to 14th and on the final day of the season Flynn returned to Turf Moor in charge of Wrexham to take on a Burnley side that had won the league.

Flynn said: “It was the last game of the season. Burnley were crowned champions and you couldn’t move at Turf Moor.

With four minutes to go there is at least a thousand people stood on the touchline by the dugouts waiting to come on the pitch.

“One of their players went down the left wing and a fan came on and tripped him, the referee said we’ll call this a day and he blew with about four minutes to go for the safety of the players.

“Last week I met some of my coaching staff at Wrexham for a reunion and one of them asked if I remember what I’d said at Burnley in the dressing room after the game. I’d said this will be us next year, and it was, we got promoted.”

While Flynn made Wrexham a solid and successful third tier team it was the FA Cup that made his name. They reached the quarter-finals in 1997 and on four occasions dumped top flight teams out of the competition, most famously when they beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Racecourse ground in 1992.

“They were champions and we had finished bottom of the league,” said Flynn. “In the first round in November we played Winsford, a local non-league team, and they played really well.

“We were 2-1 down with 10 minutes to go, we were going out and then Steve Watkin gets a hat-trick and we win 5-2.

“Telford came to us in the second round, Steve Watkin scored an 89th minute winner.

“Mickey Thomas got the equaliser against Arsenal but people assume because of the quality of the goal and the impact of the goal that it was the winner.

“But it was Steve Watkin that scored the winner, he was a local lad, and lived down the road and he got us through three games.”

Cup competitions were a forte for Flynn and in his first full season as manager the club qualified for the European Cup Winners Cup after winning the Welsh Cup.

“We drew Lyngby of Denmark in the first round,” said Flynn. “I went over to Copenhagen to watch them play Brondby in a local derby.

“I got a phone call from Manchester United and they asked me if I’d been to the game and asked what the Brondby keeper was like.

“I said ‘he’s fantastic, absolutely fantastic’. It was Peter Schmeichel at a young age.”

Wrexham barely touched the ball in two legs but managed to draw 0-0 at home and win 1-0 away, securing them a second-round match against United themselves, which ended in a 5-0 aggregate defeat.

Flynn left Wrexham in 2001 and a year later took over at Swansea, helping to lay the foundations for today’s success at the Liberty Stadium.

The management bug had well and truly bitten.