“Do I really need the hassle?”
That’s a question many Northern Counties East League players will ask themselves if the expected midweek fixture chaos occurs. That’s if they haven’t already.
Matt Wright, manager of South Leeds-based West Yorkshire League Premier Division outfit Robin Hood, understands the lengthy time and travelling commitments Step 5 and 6 players have to sign up for, despite little or no money. He quit the NCEL for Step 7 in 2008.
“I can relate to all these players who are having the same thoughts at the moment,” ex-goalkeeper Wright tells Non League Yorkshire.
“Through family pressures and work pressures because I worked shifts, I fell away from the Non League scene and I went to Step 7 with Altofts.
“I was 24 and Ash (Berry) had just been sacked from Bridlington Town. I stayed there for a couple of months after he left, but I saw the season out at Glasshoughton Welfare under Dave Holmes.
“I was a goalkeeper and towards the end of the season one of my mates at Altofts asked me if I would help them out in midweek. I played and thought ‘this team is better than the Glasshoughton team’ and I thought to myself ‘train midweek, play Saturdays, I don’t have to change as many shifts and I don’t have to beg for annual leave, this will suit me down to the ground until I want to step back up’.
“I also decided to leave Glasshoughton because we travelled to Glapwell (February 2008) and we had 11 men which included two goalkeepers due to work unavailability. That day I played upfront with a centre-back and got kicked for 90 mins.
“I always got asked to go back up to Non League. I touched base with Emley when they were quite a good team when Ash Flynn was there and I touched base with Goole. It was always ‘can I be bothered going to my boss weekly and saying I’m in the North East in midweek, I need to be away at 2pm’?.
“I didn’t miss the midweek away games of getting home at 12 and having to get up for a shift at 5 o’clock in the morning. It wasn’t something I wanted to do.”
The exodus from NCEL to Step 7 this summer began some time ago and is far from over. The commitment levels required during the new season is a major reason why.
Worsbrough Bridge have been one of the teams worst hit. The Rollinson brothers Calan and Connor, along with Liam Owen have joined Sheffield & Hallamshire Senior League Premier Division giants Dodworth. Their exciting young attacker Dan Palmer has joined Wakefield AFC. Owen’s brother Jack, the ex-Nostell striker, is a Dodworth player now too. Silkstone, in Division Two, have recruited a string of decent NCEL players as well.
In the West Yorkshire League, Wright has already seen players make the step down this summer and he expects the influx across Step 7 to continue.
“Once as you get to the age of 24 you might start with the family pressures and work pressures,” he says.
“Can you juggle the shifts and the family pressures with the demands of playing in the NCEL? I can see a lot of NCEL players going down to Step 7 and I can only see our standard improving. It has been on the decline over the years because the NCEL does the attract the better players from our standard and rightly so.
“But with the Covid situation and the chaos it will cause when we get into the flu season, it will have the knock-on effect of players not wanting to travel across Yorkshire and beyond on a Wednesday or Tuesday night. I have to agree that it will be a big factor in players’ decision as to where they are going to play.
“I’ve been keeping my eye on Twitter and I’ve seen that players have dropped down. You look at Billy Mole. He was quite a big player for Nostell, he’s playing for Hall Green United now.
“You look at Carlton, they have a new manager and they have recruited heavily and they have a lot of players who played for Emley like George Whittaker and Josh Ingham. You look and say ‘yeah there’s extra quality coming to our league’. That’s only going to drive the standard up.”
The enthusiasm for the new season was certainly there in July when the country was allowed to live a little again after the lockdown.
For some it will be wearing off as the reality of the commitment levels required, especially in the NCEL during a global pandemic, hits. Although Wright agrees the FA should have looked at the bigger picture and thought outside the box for the 2020/21 season.
“I’ve never seen a pre-season where I’ve seen as many players interested,” he says.
“We’ve had 50/55 players at pre-season training and everyone is just keen to get back playing.
“But, I think the FA should have gone down the line of ‘yeah, we’ll get players back with a little bit of normality and the competitive week-by-week element’, but regionalised it a little bit and localised the leagues.
“That’s already been spoken about, but I really think they could have gone down that route. Maybe in our league, extend it beyond April if we are starting in September.
“Will the season finish? It is one of the unknowns. You look at the FA Cup games played on Tuesday night. Teams had to travel to the North East like Goole had to. Couldn’t those games been played on Saturday instead of a midweek?
“I don’t understand why they put pressure on work and families when they could have run it on a Saturday.
“You look at the localised lockdowns as well. Is it very prudent (to have teams going out of their area)? Are you putting people at more risk? I don’t want to be too critical of people who make decisions, but you have to have a real sensible approach about it.”
Problems with commitment is not just exclusive to the NCEL. In the West Yorkshire League it is even harder. Few teams pay players and continental shifts, an issue spoken about before, are more obstacles.
“Availability is an issue in our league,” Wright says.
“My lads pay £5 in a week in subs so when family pressures come, football is easy to drop. Midweek at the beginning of the season and the end of the season for Step 7 are quite hard.
“They are 6.30pm kick offs and getting players there for a warm-up is difficult. If you’re like me and you want to have the correct approach you want to do a warm-up. Sometimes you’re getting there and just having to say ‘get out and play’ and it is hard because some lads won’t get there until kick-off.”
To counter availability issues, Wright believes following the ‘Nostell Miners Welfare way’ is a potential route to a running a successful semi-professional or amateur club.
Ian Walker, the man who led Robin Hood to the WYL Premier Division in 2014 as runaway Division One champions, is developing a unique ‘way of life’ for a Non League Football club at Nostell in his first year in charge of the first team.
It is designed at delivering success and continuity over a long-term period. Walker has a band of 30-plus players, mostly aged between 18 and 24 and Wright is a believer of the ex-Robin Hood manager’s philosophy.
“You have to look at the money in football and it probably isn’t as much as it once was,” he says.
“You look at the Nostell model and Ian Walker has some good young players who probably haven’t experienced Counties football whereas someone who is 28 or 29 and has been around the circuit and gets a little bit of money will think ‘can I commit to the commitment levels required’? They may think ‘I don’t want to do it for that little amount of money’.
“For young players who don’t have the family pressures or the work commitments and want to make their way in the game, it is probably the way forward.
“Ian probably has it right on the money. You may not see the benefits this year, but next year with what he is building you will see the benefits and see a competitive Nostell team in that Division.
“I think that is the model to go down. I’ve integrated the youth teams coming through at Robin Hood so I have an under 18s and our reserve team is heavily populated by young people. I feel that is the way to go because for older players, family pressures are a lot higher and work commitments, the shifts are a way of life now. People work on a Saturday now and they work on an evening now so getting continuity in teams is not there.”
Wright spent his brief Non League career with Tadcaster Albion, Wakefield FC, Emley, Bridlington Town and Glasshoughton Welfare. He was one of Ash Berry’s almost mythical ‘Red Van Brigade’ during the Shelley manager’s reign at Bridlington in the mid-2000s.
After dropping into the West Yorkshire League with Altofts to play under Andy Sibson, he spent several years with them and won several trophies. At the same time he made his first entry into management.
Before joining the Civil Service in 2013, he had been head of football at Pontefract New College for two years and the Guiseley Vixens boss for three.
But succeeding legendary Non League player Jamie Price as Altofts under 19s manager in 2012 was a major step-up on the coaching ladder.
He went on to reunite with (then-assistant manager) Price at Bradford (Park Avenue) during the Martin Drury era in 2015, taking on a coaching role at Horsfall Stadium.
A year later, the Robin Hood job was available and following in the footsteps of ex-Guiseley promotion-winning manager Steve Kittrick, whose first manager’s job was at Robin Hood around 1992, Wright took the role on.
Four years on, the club have made steady progress under him. Their highest finish has been eighth in 2018 and Wright believes the foundations are in place to kick on.
“Every season we look to build on what we have done previously and we always look to have strong cup competitions,” he says.
“My aims this season are to establish ourselves in the top half of the West Yorkshire League which I feel is a really achievable target. If we get consistency hopefully we can push on further than that. I feel we are an established name at this level. Now it is about stepping it up.
“We have the player base, I have the backroom staff and we have the mentality of the club all feeding in the same direction. I just feel now we have to focus on being a top five or six team in our league which I think this season is something we should looking to do.
“Going forward over the next five to ten years we should be looking to establish ourselves right at the top end of the West Yorkshire League.”
Beeston St Anthony’s, the runaway 2019/20 leaders until the season was expunged, lie in wait on the opening day for Robin Hood on the 19th. The NCEL season technically starts on the same day and if anyone gets cold feet before then about committing to potential fixture chaos, Wright is open to calls.
“100% I’d be interested, there’s a lot out there (who will drop out) and there’ll be a lot out there who will fall away in the first couple of weeks of the season after thinking ‘this is too much’,” he adds.
“We’re here and we want to have the best players we can get. We have the best facilities to offer in our league, Knaresborough aside, and if the commitment side of things becomes too much at NCEL level, we are a real option for players to come to achieve personal goals with quality set-up.”
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, please 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. There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
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 now as we slowly return to ‘action’, 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.
We have enjoyed great success over the past three years. Several of our players have represented Mencap GB in Geneva, including Billy Hobson from Selby and Greg Smith, whose story is quite inspiring.
Like most organisations, we have been affected financially by the Coronavirus and because of the cancelled Lucille Rollinson Memorial Tournament, we are down on projected income for the year and we have incurred losses in the last few months.
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. Several of our players are suffering from effects of the lockdown and we are determined to be in the strongest position possible to provide services for them.
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.