Daisy Hill captain Jake O’Brien will reach a personal landmark in a couple of weeks’ time when he plays in his 150th game for the club.

The Daisy skipper currently has 147 appearances to his name, but with the club’s last two games being postponed due to the weather, he now has to wait until early February before he will reach the landmark, although he admits he hadn’t been aware of it until recently.

“I didn’t realise I was getting close to that figure until it was mentioned to me at the club a few weeks ago”, said Jake.

“I obviously knew I’d been at the club a while, but hadn’t really taken note of how many appearances I’d made.

“It’s actually quite a privilege, and I think being the club captain and also the longest-serving player with most appearances, they go quite well together and I hope it shows that I care for the club.

“I know everyone involved at the club and I see all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes, and I am proud to be captain of the club and to be able to reach 150 appearances.”

Farnworth native Jake is now in his seventh season at Daisy Hill, although his route to the Plumb Factory Stadium involved various stops on the North West footballing map, and meeting some familiar names along the way, too.

“I began playing for a team called Our Lady of Lourdes, which was based at the school in Farnworth, and from there I was picked up by academies.

“My grandad played for a number of teams in the Bolton Combination over many years and he, along with my mum and dad, spent many years taking me to football games all over the North West.

“I was at the Bolton Wanderers academy first, and then went to Manchester City and was there until I was about 12.

“I was initially in the under-10s team at City, and I played for a couple of years alongside Phil Foden, and also Aaron Morley, who is now at Bolton Wanderers.

“I was a striker when I was younger, and because I was always top goalscorer in the leagues I played in when I started, I always thought I was the best player on the planet when I was that age!

“But when I started playing up front alongside Phil Foden, I realised I wasn’t even close compared to him, and at City in those days, even then they were always building teams around him.

“I then moved to the academy at Bury and after that went to play at Chorley when I was 16. While I was playing for their under-18s, I came to Daisy Hill initially as they wanted me to get experience in men’s football.

“It suited me as it was local to me, and it was a perfect place to get regular football, and I made my debut in the North West Counties League against Longridge Town at the start of the 2018/19 season.”

After settling into regular first-team football, playing in midfield as well as in defence, O’Brien left Daisy early in the 2022/23 season to move to Bury, but injury restricted him to just three appearances there, and after two appearances at Cheadle Town, he was given the chance to return to familiar surroundings when Lee Hill took over as manager at the Plumb Factory Stadium in the summer of 2023.

O’Brien explained: “I had a bad spell with injuries after I left, and when Lee came in as manager at the start of last season, he asked me if I would come back and be the captain.

“It was a perfect move as I’d not played much, so I was happy to come back, get fit again and see how we went from there.

“Being captain was a new role for me, but I think it helped with me being at the club before, knowing how the club ran, and I could install the values of the club with a lot of new players coming in at the time.

“I think it also helps the club is fairly local to me, you can spend time there, get people down to come and watch and get to know the fanbase, and also help the committee to grow the club.

“As captain you do have extra responsibility, and I am always thinking of ways in which I can have an impact on the squad, for example of someone is not doing well, you have to think about either putting an arm round them or give them a telling off.

“I had people who helped ease me into the club when I first went there, and I know it helped me settle in, so I try to do the same for the lads in the squad.”

So, back and settled in at the club and with an appearance milestone about to be reached, does O’Brien see himself clocking up more appearance records in future?

“I hope so,” he added. “I feel good, although I’ve got a lot going on outside football as I’ve just bought my first homes" target="_blank">house with my girlfriend Anna.

“With work as well it’s a busy time, but hopefully I’ll be able to play for a good few more seasons yet.

“I don’t really look too far ahead, I just take it season by season, get one out of the way and then look ahead to the next one.

“You never know when your last game is going to be, you could get an injury any time, so for now I am just focused on playing and being the club captain.

“We started last season with a totally new squad, and we have had more new faces come in this season, but I think we now have a really good group now.

“We are competing every week, and I am really enjoying being at the club at the moment.”

That feelgood factor, coupled with the team’s recent good run of form, has set Daisy up nicely for the remainder of the season, although the skipper insists they are sticking to the old footballing cliché of taking one game at a time.

He went on: “Personally, I am not setting any targets. You just want to win as many games as you can and be consistent.

“Last year, we couldn’t win many at home for some reason, and although this season our home record is much better, we haven’t won many away.

“With the new lads who have come in, over the last five or six games we have been a bit more consistent. So, for now, I think we do just need to take it one game at a time and try to build up a consistent run from there.

“We have definitely improved from last year. We’ve not kept as many clean sheets as we would have liked, but we have more points and have scored more goals that we had at this stage last season,

“We had the target at the start of the season of beating last season’s points total, and we now only have to pick up five more points to beat last season’s tally.

“So, if we can get past last season’s points and goals total, and look to finish as high up the league as we can, next season we can set new targets and go again.”