Mark Lillis - from fighting Covid on the frontline to patrolling the touchline for Scunthorpe United

Just a month ago, it was on the frontline of a care home – as opposed to the perimeter of a football pitch – where Lillis was working as part of team whose responsibilities put sport into perspective.

Just as he did in his playing career where his unstinting commitment was worn as a badge of honour at the likes of boyhood team Manchester City and the club he also grew to love in Huddersfield, the 60-year-old did not shirk the challenge.

It is what you would expect from the son of a former professional boxer.

In his role at the Heathlands Village care home at Prestwich in his native Manchester, the fight was against Covid-19, which ravaged many care institutions across England during a grim Spring when thousands of elderly patients succumbed to the ghastly virus. Including residents where he worked.

It was a time that will stay with Lillis forever.

Lillis told The Yorkshire Post: “It was all new skills. Football can be a bubble sometimes. Here, you are experiencing life.

“It makes you humble and I just got stuck into it. I had to learn very quickly and it was a great experience for me.

“I started out driving and was then doing portering and working on the frontline. We had people with dementia in there and end-of-life care and cancer patients.

“We were in the Covid (sections) and on the frontline and being tested every week and having your masks and gloves on every day. You just get on with it.

“The team spirit and togetherness was like going into a family. Everyone looked after each other. There were people in their 70s and 80s still working alongside their sons and daughters.

“You would get in at half-past-seven to quarter-to-eight in the morning and have a ‘brew’ and when eight o’clock ticks, you knew your role.

“You could have a role where you were looking after a (dead) body. It was going into the room which was sealed up with clean blankets and then having to put the person onto the trolley and take them down to the morgue and then the families would come in.”

On how his path took him into working in the care sector, Lillis continued: “It was at a St George’s Day dinner. I have been going for the last twenty years and got introduced to a guy who ran a care home in Prestwich for army veterans.

“I had a tour around and got on really well with him and he said: ‘You are so positive, I wish I could get you in here.’

“Unfortunately he couldn’t, but I had a tour around and saw the vets and some of the stories were unbelievable.

“A few months later, he rang and told me about his mate who ran a care home and that he was looking for a driver.

“I had done minibus driving when I was an academy coach and used to take the players to away games.”

Having turned 60 earlier this year, Lillis – still based in Huddersfield – admits that he had not been giving too much thought to a return to football before new Scunthorpe manager Neil Cox got in touch.

His job as a care home worker may have been demanding and a heart-rending one at times, but it was a role that was fulfilling, all the same.

So when an unknown caller rang his mobile last month, he was as surprised as anyone when a route back into football transpired.

Lillis commented: “Working in the care home was an unbelievable experience for me.

“We finished at half past three on one Friday and I got home and saw my phone going. I did not know whose number it was and it was Coxy (Neil Cox).

“He said: ‘What are you up to?’ and I said I had a really good job at a care home looking after Covid patients. He then told me he had just got the ‘Scunny’ job and said: ‘Would you come as my No 2?

“The care home was going really well and they were brilliant and did not stand in my way and allowed me to do a week’s notice. I got a trophy and a letter from the CEO, which upset me, but in a happy way. They thought a lot of me.

“They got me presents when I left and there were five or six cards that everyone signed on all the floors and departments. I was pleased I got stuck into it.”

Instead of heading west to Manchester, Lillis – who spent over four years in charge of Huddersfield’s academy and had four spells as caretaker-manager – now makes the trip further east to work at Scunthorpe, a club he also knows well.

A player with the Iron in the late Eighties and early Nineties when he was reunited with his former Town manager Mick Buxton, Lillis was later first-team coach and then assistant when the club were promoted under Brian Laws in 1999.

Lillis said: “It is Neil’s first role as a No 1 and I am proud to be there to pass on my experience.

“I must admit when I came back from India in 2018, I thought I would get ‘back in’ (football). It went really well there.

“But I thought there was a bit of ageism in the game. I was applying for jobs at 57, 58 and 59 and not even getting replies or emails back, after what I had done in the game.

“Then you maybe start thinking: ‘I started in 1977 and signed my first contract and had 40 odd years – that will do me.’ But there is one part of you that keeps believing and then I got a phone call like that... It is great to be back out on the grass.”

Former Halifax Town manager Lillis’s odyssey had taken him to India in late 2017 when he was named as assistant at Indian Super League side Chennaiyin FC, where he successfully linked up with manager John Gregory, who he knew from his playing days at Derby County.

Much like his experiences in the care home and throughout his footballing career, Lillis embraced the challenge and found life on the sub-continent to be enhancing from a life and work perspective.

He added: “What a fantastic journey that was. We went in at Chennai with John and it was an eye-opener from living in a big five-star hotel for eight months to going outside.

“Every away game took four or five days to prepare for. You would have a six-hour flight to Mumbai, Delhi or Goa.

“But we ended up winning the Indian Super League on the smallest budget in the league.

“MS Dhoni (India cricket legend) was one of our directors and I met him a good few times and he was a nice fellow. We averaged about 18 to 20,000 supporters.

“But you’d go to Kerala and it was 70,000 and the place would be bouncing and the fans were all painted yellow. They would be clapping and cheering and it was not aggressive. It was really good.

“The good thing for me was that I was working with seven different nationalities, cultures and faiths. We had Portuguese, Dutch and Indians, for instance. It was great for me as a coach and the food was fantastic. You have to embrace the culture.”

Mark Lillis. Someone who has lived a life less ordinary.

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James Mitchinson