Danny Buttle, a magic maker for many and an hilarious pranksters to others.
Former Handsworth and Bridlington left winger Buttle is a man of many talents. He can a cross a beautiful ball into the penalty area for strikers to score from.
He can impersonate Shaggy and he does a brilliant Barnsley accent which has fooled the odd top NCEL manager now and then.
Buttle has even acted a player’s agent and won the odd player a pay rise. Is he to blame for spiralling wage demands in Non League Football?
Across a great career, Buttle has won titles, had a late night rendezvous with Paul McShane at McDonalds, won the chairman’s player of the season trophy and been on a night out with Dave Ricardo. He’s even in Frickley Athletic’s hall of fame. So here it is…
This is Danny Buttle’s Non League Journey:
“i was playing local football and towards the end of the 2005/06 season, Pete Smurthwaite rang me after taking the role as manager. He was short of players and I had a really good couple of months in the NPL. I had gone to playing from Humber Premier League to Northern Premier League football in the space of a few months. A couple of clubs came knocking at the end of the season and I went to Worksop Town who were in the Conference North at the time. Ronnie Glavin was the manager, a great guy. I did a full pre-season there and it was probably the fittest I’ve ever been. Andy Kiwomya did all the fitness. It got even more incredible as from playing local football a few months earlier, I was now playing Sheffield United who had all their first team out and it was Neil Warnock’s team which had just got promoted to the Premier League. It was great to play in the game and I played against three International full-backs in the space of 70 minutes. It was surreal.
“For whatever reason I didn’t go back to Worksop, it is my biggest regret. I decided to stay at Brid and give it another go. I was flying at the start of that season and I got a move to Ferriby under Brian France. You could say it didn’t go to plan. It was a perfect opportunity as I lived round the corner and it was NPL Premier Division, but it didn’t work out whatsoever. Brian got the sack and Neil Parsley got the job. We played Leek away and I came on as a sub around 78 minutes. I didn’t touch the ball and he brought me off again after about seven minutes. I thought ‘well, I don’t think it is going to work out here’. I’m not the first, that’s happened to a few players by various managers over the years.
“So I went back to Brid under Ash Berry and that was another nightmare. Brid were near the bottom and I wasn’t his type of players. While I was there Nige Danby swapped a player for me and I went to Goole and I played there for two years. I really kicked on in the second season. I must have scored nine goals from the wing and I got loads and loads of assists.
“Nige is one of the best managers I’ve had. You knew where you were with them and Norbs. They told it how it was and the craic between them was brilliant. Some of the banter was unbelievable. I can’t speak highly enough of them.
“They recruited really well. Chris Tate, an ex-professional, he came. He must be the only British tourist who has been to Benidorm and not seen the night-time. He’d have a few beers during the day and just pass out so we’d put him to bed and head out. That trip was mental. During the day we were supergluing coins to the floor and watching people try to pick them up.
“We once got the changing room robbed at Loughborough and midway through the game we saw Nige and Mick and run off. Money, keys got taken and we found out at half-time. Nige and Mick were going bananas. I think someone stole my tracksuit and I had go home in my kit. It was January too and I was covered in mud.”
The 2007 ‘Pay to Play’ West Riding County Cup Final
“I got the ground and as Dunc Bray said we basically had to pay to get in. Nige named the team and I put my kit and went to warm-up. As I’m warming-up, Nige comes up to me:
‘Danny, you can’t play’
‘What you mean I can’t play’?
‘You weren’t signed on in time’.
“I had signed on in the March and they had already played the semi-final. I couldn’t believe it. So I finished the warm-up, got changed and watched the game. I was fuming because I was really pumped for it. Guiseley had said something in the local paper and we had pinned it up on the changing room wall and that had fired us up. The lads absolutely battered them and Dunc was on fire. We won 3-1.”
Entry into the Frickley Athletic history books
“As I’d had a good season at Goole, a couple of clubs rang me and one phone call was from Steve Bleasdale who people may remember from the Big Ron Manager programme. He was manager of Leigh Genesis and I thought it was a wind-up and I told him where to go. It turned out to be genuine so I drove over to Leigh from Hull which is two hours away for a few pre-season training sessions. Because they were in a new stadium, it was great. But because Goole offered me a bit more money I stayed there. The thing was a month into the season, the club went into administration and we got a ten-point deduction. The money got pulled as well. It was a shame as with the players we had, we had a chance of pushing for the play-offs.
“So I got the chance to go to Frickley under Billy Heath. Funnily enough the first game was Leigh away. But the only time I touched the ball was when Billy put me on set-pieces like throw-ins, corners and free kicks. I don’t think I touched the ball in open play. Afterwards I said to Billy that I was going back to Goole. Billy persuaded me to give it one more go. I was on the bench for a game against Bradford (Park Avenue) and I came on late-on and I didn’t touch the ball again. I just decided to cut my losses and leave. But I left a mark as I’m the only player in Frickley’s history to play twice, but not touch the ball in open play.”
Buttle goes Large at Bridlington Town
“I spent the full season (2009/10) with Brid and we won the league, but whether that’s a great memory is yes and no.
“I started off the season brilliantly, but then in the January I was on a night out in Hull with my friends. One lifted me up and my testicles got twisted. Obviously it was painful and two hours later in a bar I started being sick and my nose started bleeding. I looked down below and I realised by the size of things, I had a problem. I ended up in hospital for four days and I was operated on. I couldn’t play until April and I had put on two stone.
“Nige Danby was manager of Harrogate Railway and I played a few games to get back fit. I don’t think Gary (Allanson) was too happy about me playing for them and we kind of fell out. He had probably thought the injury was a wind-up originally too. What can you say to that. ‘What a load of b*******’. It was a shame as up until the injury I had been scoring goals, making goals and we had a great team. Ash Allanson, Nathan Hotte, Tom Fleming and almost two players for each position and we were blowing teams away.
“Gary Allanson was one of the best coaches I had and I’ve said this to Ash. I think if it had been now, I would have appreciated Gary more and appreciated how good a coach he was. His sessions were always.”
Dave Ricardo
“Dave Ricardo, that guy is something special, especially when he’s had a drink. We had a team night-out in Whitby where my mum and dad have a caravan. There was nine of us. We were walking about and Dave got really excited as he saw an ice cream van. It was parked outside a house and he walked through the gate and jumped in the van. He started playing the music and started dancing about. We were in hysterics and after two minutes, the guy whose van it was came out of his house and chased us off. I looked at my watch and it was 8pm and I thought ‘if he’s like this at 8pm, what’s he going to be like in a few hours’. I’ve been back to the caravan since and the guy has a metal gate and everything now, proper fencing as well. It just needs a sign now – ‘The Dave Ricardo Fence’.
“A few weeks after the Ice Cream Van debacle, Dave said we had been invited to a pool party at this mansion in Hull. We met up in Beverley and went round some pubs wearing a towel and swim shorts initially. We got there to this mansion and he clearly had been half-invited. He was invited, but we weren’t and some people took umbrage. We jumped into the pool and we were rowdy. Before we left, Ash Allanson and another lad called Robbie who was the physio, went into the cupboards and started filling bags with steaks, wines, condiments. They were students so they wanted groceries to sort themselves out for a few weeks.”
Brigg Town
“The 2010/11 season is one of my best under a great manager, Steve Housham. Everyone was on £50 in the Northern Premier League and bear in mind people can get £200 to play at that level. We finished in the play-offs and we got quite far in the FA Cup. I got 15 goals from the left wing and I scored 12 out of 12 penalties. We had a great goalkeeper in Andy Pettinger and a great back four so we won a lot of games 1-0 or 2-0.
“We had a great set of lads and that’s where I became mates with Anthony Bowsley. I regard him as one of my best mates. He’s a great lad and he’s one of the funniest kids I’ve met. Some of the stuff he has done is unbelievable. Going to away games like Market Drayton, two hours away, for £50 sounds mad, but the trips were brilliant. We’d get off the bus in Hull absolutely steaming. They were great time. We’d turn up, play and have craic with the lads.
“Steve Housham’s main strength is his man-management. His motivational skills are second to none. He’s quite jokey, but he’s a disciplinarian as well. I remember playing Lincoln away on a Tuesday night and I wasn’t involved in the game as much as I should be. We were defending a corner and I was tucking my shirt in and he started shouting:
‘Danny, Danny, if you don’t get your hands off your f****** knackers in a minute, you’re coming and sitting next to me’.
“Obviously there’s only 100 people there so when he said that I was really embarrassed. I’m sure it is the same game where we conceded a late goal and he slapped one of the lads on the back of the head. Steve went onto manage Gainsborough and I’m not surprised that he’s had a decent managerial career.”
Brigg Town Woes and the McDonalds Encounter with Paul McShane
“The Brigg team completely dispersed at the end of the season and I was gutted. I didn’t really want to play football the following season and looking back I shouldn’t have. I had no desire at all. I signed for Ferriby and I shouldn’t have had because my mind wasn’t on it.
“We played Hull City in a pre-season and I played in the second half. I watched the first half and Paul McShane was the right-back for Hull. But Hull played Ferriby off the park and I thought I’m going to have to show them no respect because otherwise they’ll run over the top of me. I actually went past McShane a couple of times and got a cross in. After that I was goading him, telling him that he was ‘a pussy’. I don’t know why, but he didn’t react at all. He then had the ball in the corner and it is unlike me, but I’ve gone in and put my studs in his quads. The referee Mark Brown used to go in the same pub as me so he didn’t do anything. He was a straight red all day long. On the way home I went to McDonalds and Paul McShane pulled up next to me. I looked across and he spotted me. I turned away and I absolutely pooed myself. He was 6ft 4 and he could kill me if he wanted to. He stared at me for ages and my missus was in the car just laughing at me.
“But going back to that season I must have had four or five transfers because I couldn’t settle at all. I think went to Goole, Brigg, it was a nothing season.
“I went back to Brigg for 2012/13 and it was a steady season under Mick Gray. We had a low budget and although we finished in the lower half of the table, the club did well to stay up. We had a lot of young players who went onto play for Cleethorpes like Alex Flett, Liam Davies, Liam Dickens. Scott Hellowell and Paul Grimes came back towards the end.
“It is a bit random as I went to Rainworth at the start of the following season and things were going well until the manager Kevin Gee left. Around September-time I went back to Brigg and spent the rest of the season there. It was tough as we were in a relegation battle. Scott Helliwell, one of my mates, had taken over from Mick Gray and it was a struggle to get players in. I remember a game where we were 3-0 down at Newcastle Town and I scored an equalising goal which kept us up in the end.
“We also got to a cup final at Lincoln City against Stamford who were doing well in the league above. We had a bare eleven and we took them to penalties and lost.
“The following season is when things crumbled massively at Brigg. Scott was the manager, but the club was a mess and it was difficult for him. There were embargoes and we once turned up at Kidsgrove with ten players. The club has resurrected itself now, but at the time it was at rock bottom.”
Prank Calls
“Me, Bows and Jody Barford were in a car school when we were at Brigg and we used to prank a few managers. They all used to fall for it hook, line and sinker.
“The one we did on Leon Sewell was one of the best ones. He was manager of Westella and I pretended to be Mick Norbury in a thick Barnsley accent and I said I wanted to sign Chris Spinks. I started arguing with Leon because I said I was going to offer him loads of money and Leon said he wouldn’t leave. It started with:
‘Hi Leon, it’s Mick Norbury, alright duck’?
“The call ended with Leon saying:
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow Mick’
‘You better do’.
‘I will do’.
“I used do prank calls before nights out with Ash Allanson and Paul Fraser who used to play in goal for Selby Town. They wrote the scripts and I did the voice on the phone.
We rang Mick Gray and I pretended to be the North Ferriby manager. Now bear in mind it was nine o’clock on a Saturday night and it was on a withheld number. I’m not sure the centre-back’s name, it could have been Steve Barrett?
‘Right I want to sign your centre-half Steve Barrett’
‘I don’t think he’ll leave’.
‘I’m going to offer him £80’
‘Right I’ll speak to him in a minute.
“So Mick rang Steve Barrett to tell him Ferriby were coming in for him and offered him an extra £20. Mick also rang Paul Fraser who had been sat at the side of me when I had made the phone call.
‘You’ll never guess what, the North Ferriby manager has just rang and wants to sign Steve Barrett’.
‘Really’?
‘Yeah, do you think he’ll go’?
‘Yeah’
‘I’ve just rang Steve and offered him £20 more quid’.
Steve Barrett then rang Paul Fraser the following day and said:
‘I can’t believe it, I’m going to go to the gym tomorrow and get myself fit for Ferriby’.
“It is brilliant banter that we got him a pay rise!
“We once got Mitch Cook when he was the Brid manager. I rang him for a friendly once as Mick Norbury and I gave him my mate’s number which he rang the next day. He’d pencilled it in as well.”
Best Period at Handsworth
“I would say that Peter Duffield was my favourite manager from all the ones I had. I had heard a few things about him before I signed because he is basically a marmite manager. Some lads loved him and others didn’t. But he rang a few times and he drove from Sheffield to Hull on a Tuesday night in a pub in Hull and I thought ‘wow, he clearly wants me’. I loved his passion for football and he said it how it was. I always knew where I stood with him. He could shout and if a game wasn’t going well, you’d dread half-time.
“One time at Pickering we got beat 4-0 or something like that and he had a go at me. I was in the clubhouse with my dad and we were about to leave and I saw Duffs and I said we were getting off. He carried on from the changing room and basically gave me a coaching session in front of my dad. It shows how much he cared about winning. The amount of times a game would finish at 5.45pm and we’d still be in our kits an hour later were unbelievable.
“Handsworth was my best period and I hit it off straightaway. My first game was away at Nostell and we won 5-2 and I set up four goals and I scored. It was a love affair with the club after that. I love everything about it, the people, the professionalism. The set-up was superb and I haven’t even seen the new 3G at Olivers Mount, but the plans that were in place were second to none. People like Steve Holmes, John Stainrod, Pete Whitehead were great.
“The (2015) League Cup Final was a memorable moment as we were 3-1 down with six minutes to go and we won 4-3 in normal time. Sam Smith scored the winning penalty.
“How we didn’t win a trophy or didn’t go up during the following season I’ll never know. I would say that was my best season and I was 31 or 32 as well. What made it good was that I would cross from the left and there were two strikers in Kieran Wells and Jon Froggatt who were so good in the air and were natural finishers. Colin Marrison was on the other side and he was good at getting to the back stick to get on the end of my crosses. Someone once said I had 40-odd assists that year, but I don’t know if that is true. I didn’t score many goals mind.
“Duffs left midway the season and Mick Godber went from being the assistant to the manager. We just couldn’t stop winning and we pushed Tadcaster all the way.
“The decisive game in why we didn’t go up was the defeat to Tadcaster late in the season.
“I set the first goal up for Froggatt and I celebrated in front of the Tadcaster fans who gave me dogs abuse. Eight minutes had gone so it was a bit premature. We went 3-1 down quite quickly and (goalkeeper) Archie (Sneath) got sent off. That lost us the title, but I think we lost twice to them and Brid which you can’t do.
“I won the chairman’s player of the year and it says a lot when Froggatt and Wells scored 40 goals-a-piece. It wasn’t just down to me as people like Simon Harrison created a lot of goals. Steve Warne had a few assists as well as Luke Fletcher. You had people like Gaz Griffiths who scored nine goals from centre-half.
“We finished fourth the following season (2016/17, but we should have done a lot better. Mick left with four games to go and Jas Colliver took over in pre-season. I played right up until September (2017 under Jas before leaving to go to Brid.”
Brid and Return to Goole
“I spent a year under Curtis (Woodhouse) and it was an easy transition as Anthony Bowsley was his assistant. I played left-back for a lot of it as Curtis wanted to play 4-3-3 which I didn’t really fit into.
“I went back to Handsworth for a few months before going to Goole where Terry Barwick and Matty Bloor had just become joint managers. I went as player/coach. They were bottom of the league with six points and when he rang I thought ‘oh god, I don’t think we can do it’. But because Bloory believed in it, I said I’d go.
“We succeeded in our aim of staying by winning the last game against Hall Road. It is a happy memory, but it was a tough period because I was part of the management team and it was a struggle to sign players because of where we were in the table. We managed to get a few good players in and we had a few good results like Liversedge away.
“The Hall Road game which was a winner takes all game was a great day. There were a lot of fans there and Carl Stewart scored in the last 15 minutes to keep us up. If Harrogate Railway had won and it had been a draw, both us and Hall Road would have gone down. Harrogate ended up beating Staveley away from home so Carl Stewart’s goal was hugely important.
“I remember picking the ball up and running into Hall Road’s half, this is late in the game. It opened up and I ran for goal rather than the corner. I had a shot and the goalkeeper saved it and Hall Road went through and a kid put it wide from a one-on-one chance. I remember Bloory going absolutely mental.”
Yorkshire International Football
“I played in Jersey with the Yorkshire International Football Team a couple of years. I played for Handsworth on the Saturday and on the Sunday I travelled to Manchester Airport around 11am. At 1pm before we got on the plane, I said to the manager Ryan Farrell:
‘What time do we kick off today’?
‘Oh, we kick off in about an hour and half’.
“We were still in the departure lounge at Manchester Airport! The Jersey team were really good and I still had jelly legs from playing the day before.
“The flight is 45 minutes long so we had 45 minutes in Jersey from coming off to the plane to the start of the match. We could have been six down after the first 30 minutes because we were still leggy. I think we lost 2-1 in the end.
“We went back to the hotel and I remember singing Shaggy and I think YIFA remember me more for being a s*** karaoke rapper than a footballer. It says a lot really.”
Last Season
“I went to Garforth last summer and we had some great results early on like beating Yorkshire Amateur away, Shildon in the FA Cup.
“We were keeping clean sheets until we had one dodgy game when we lost 7-1 at Silsden. To say it was only last year, Rob Hunter’s half-time rant is one of the best I’ve ever seen. We were 4-0 down and rightly so he was tearing into us. But he accidentally managed to flick a switch on the music player so this dance music started playing. He didn’t know how to turn it off so he started shouting ‘f****** hell, turn it off’. I couldn’t look up and after 30 seconds of this music going off, all the lads were laughing underneath their tops.
“I then got a call to go to Winterton which is ten minutes from my house so it was no-brainer. They’re managed by Scott (Helliwell) and Paul Grimes, two of my best mates. We were on course to win the league until the season ended. I think my last touch of a football was the assist for Craig Nelthorpe in the Selby game.
“At this rate, I might end up retiring on that note. I’m 36 now, so who knows what the future holds. I’m definitely going to carry on because the longer this break has gone on, the more I have been missing it. Phone calls like this and speaking to other football lads give you the bug again.
“There’s nothing better than playing well on a Saturday and winning and then going out with your mates on a Saturday. There’s no better feeling for me.”
If you have enjoyed this interview and the Non League Journey interview series, please watch the video at the bottom of the page and consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page.
NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams so when the green light to return is given, our work will play an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
Like most organisations, we have been affected financially by the Coronavirus and we have incurred losses which we cannot recover. We have not been hit as badly as other organisations, but we do need raise £2000 to put us back at the level we were at in mid-March and enable us to make a difference once again to our players’ lives in the future, without having financial worries. As each day goes on, a substantial number of our players become further isolated so we need to be ‘ready for action’ when restrictions are lifted.
Any amount raised above £2000 will be put towards new projects (when the world returns to normal) designed to further benefit people with disabilities and learning difficulties. You can learn more about the organisation HERE and on our Facebook page.
Watch the video below to see highlights from our three years as an organisation. The video was produced for our players at the end of March to remind them of good memories from the last three years.