Mick Midwood’s Non League Journey

Mick Midwood’s football career was certainly memorable, if not colourful at times.

A pain in the backside for legendary Halifax Town boss George Mulhall who sacked him twice, yet signed him at least three times. He also scored a very important goal for Halifax in the mid-1990s.

Brian Horton wasn’t a fan and that led to Midwood getting sacked 45 minutes before the former Huddersfield Town manager’s final match in charge of the Terriers in October 1997.

Cast aside by Huddersfield, he basically spent the rest of the decade playing for Happy Valley (not the TV series) and Instant Dict in Hong Kong.

He eventually found a perfect home in Farsley Celtic and he became an important part of the early stages of the Lee Sinnott rocket ride which took the village club to the Conference in 2007.

Injury curtailed Midwood’s Non League career in 2005. Local football dawned for a few years before a long hiatus from the field until 2018.

Although a very sad story, that’s when Midwood turned his hand to football minibus driving and heroic goalkeeping which formed a poignant ending to his playing career.

This is Mick Midwood’s Non League Journey:

A Brush with Warnock 

“I started at Huddersfield Town as a schoolboy. I was 14 when I signed with them. I went onto be a YTS and then a first year pro. Ian Ross was the manager of the first team when I signed schoolboy forms and then Neil Warnock took over and I did my apprenticeship and first year pro when he was the manager. Kevin Blackwell was the youth team coach and he actually took over that job from George Mulhall who was a legend. I didn’t have the best dealings with Warnock and Blackwell to be honest! You could see with them that if you’re one of the favourites then you’d looked after all the time. That’s just how football was and maybe still is. 

“The story which set Warnock against me was from when I was the head apprentice. All the youth and reserve players used to train in the away changing room at the old Leeds Road ground and all the first team got changed in the home one. Warnock, Kev, and Mick Jones used the referee’s room. The gaffer had had his shower and he popped his head into the away dressing room because he wanted a brush for his hair. Me being me being a dick which I’ve carried on throughout my life, I said ‘oh, there’s one gaffer, just behind the door’. He turned to see this 3ft sweeping brush and he just looked at me to say ‘you think that’s funny do you’? I did and certainly everyone else in the room did because they were laughing. That’s the worst thing you can do to a manager as I found out a couple of days later when Kev Blackwell made me run round the pitch for the full day. I wasn’t really involved at first team level until after he’d gone when I went back under Brian Horton a couple of years later. That didn’t go too well either.”

Macclesfield Town loan (1995)

“I went on loan for three months in the end. Unbeknown to me in the first month Neil Warnock had made a deal with Sammy McIlroy that I had to play. Steve Payne was there at the time and he was on loan from Huddersfield. Mark Lillis was also the coach so I knew those two. Dagenham away was the first game and I was surprised that he put me straight in as Macc were flying at the time (in the Conference). We beat Dagenham 4-0 and I scored two past Bob Bolder who I used to have in my sticker book. It was a brilliant and that month went fantastically well. I think I scored half-a-dozen goals and we were still top. I wanted to stay because I was playing regular first team football. 

“They increased the deal from one month to three, but the same agreement about me playing wasn’t in so I didn’t play for the next two months. I was like ‘this is not as much fun as the first month’. Macc had some cracking lads and it was a really good club, but I just wanted to play football.”

Signing for George Mulhall at Halifax (1995)

“I got released at the end of my first year pro at Huddersfield and I signed for George at Halifax. A legend of a bloke, even though he sacked me twice. I’d still run through a brick wall for him. One of my first memories of George was when I was an apprentice at Huddersfield and he had called me into his office. He sat me down and he threw a Roy of the Rovers comic at me. There was a sketch on the front and it was about a powerful shot and there was a radar gun at the side of it. In his great Scottish accent he said ‘who’s that man’? I said ‘I don’t know George, Roy Race’? ‘Come on, tell me, tell me who’s that man’, he said. It went on and he said ‘it is f***ing me, man’. So there was a picture of George on it because he had been recorded having the hottest shot in football from his time at Sunderland. There was no boasting from George so he wouldn’t say that in front of everyone. I think he just wanted to tell someone he was on the front of Roy of the Rovers. 

“Just to prove what a legend he was; we played a Northern Immediate game with Huddersfield at Sunderland on a Saturday morning. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there when we got there and we thought it was going to be great playing in front of a big crowd. As we got off the bus they surrounded George and by the time the game started there was nobody there. They’d just come to see George. His face that day was a picture and it must have taken him back to his playing days.”

Sacked by Mulhall (twice)

“I forget the order and dates of when things happened, it was that long ago so I’m not sure when the sackings were! But he definitely sacked me twice! 

“I loved playing Sunday morning football so that got me into quite a bit of bother with George. When he sacked me the first time there were only half-a-dozen of us who were full-time at Halifax. He called me into his office on a Monday morning and said ‘did you play yesterday’? I couldn’t lie to George. He was like a father figure and I said ‘yeah, I did. I played for my dad’s Sunday team’. I tried to convince him that the reason why I had played was good. I said ‘they are all my mates and if they didn’t win yesterday they’d get relegated so I felt I had to play and we won 5-4’. Then he said ‘the only thing is; you played against one of the (Halifax) director’s team and they’ve gone down instead’ and he released me. He let me come back a couple of years later, but he said ‘if you play Sunday’s again, there’ll be trouble’. I saw that as trouble, I didn’t think he’d sack me, but he did again.

“The second time (possibly late 1997/98) was when George and Kieran O’Regan were running the team together (after John Carroll’s brief stint in charge). At that time there was no reserve team so if you didn’t get in the first team you had no football. We were only training twice a week at Hipperholme School as well so I played on a Sunday. Then before the next training session George told me he needed a word, but he made me train first. I remember John Brown saying ‘if he’s making you train first, at least he’s not going to sack you’. He worked me really hard in training and then sacked me afterwards.”

Scoring to keep Halifax up (1995/96)

“I played for the first team for the full season in my first year at Halifax. George ran the first team until a Scouse bloke called John Carroll became the manager for the final few games. I was suspended for his first game. He made a point of saying ‘anyone who is not playing is not my concern, it is those who are available’. As a 19-year-old lad I thought that was aimed at me because I wasn’t playing. I didn’t play in the next game, but I played in the last match at Bromsgove which we needed to win to stay up (in the Conference). This is a story that a mate of mine remembers better than me. I ended up playing Sunday football with a lad called Matt Sewell who is an Halifax fan who went to the Bromsgrove away game. We won 1-0 and I scored after about an hour and he came jumping on the pitch and he has pictures of himself jumping on my back! We ended up playing in the same team together.”

Christmas 1996 departure from Halifax

“John Carroll had said throughout the summer (of 1996) that he wanted me to sign a new contract. At 19 or 20, living in Elland just down the road, it was ideal. I was also playing most weeks. He got me to sign the contract and I played once before Christmas. There’s a common denominator in this though. It is definitely me. 

“I’d thought I had done well in the first season. I had been the top goal-scorer. I had been picked for the North of England semi-pro team. At 19 there were no young kids doing that in those days. By Christmas I’d had enough. 

“Chris Galvin, Tony Glavin’s brother, used to play for Leeds and he’s a friend of my dad. He was doing some scouting for teams out in Hong Kong and asked me if I fancied going out there for a month. The club would pay for everything out there and if it worked out they would offer me a contract. If it didn’t work they’d give me two grand to come home with. In 1996 it was a lot of money so I gave it a go. 

“I told John Carroll that I wanted to go and told him that he’d ruined my love for the game. He was sceptical and told me because I was on contract another club coming in for me was against the rules. He ended up releasing me and two weeks later I flew out to Hong Kong. I stayed there for three out of the next four seasons.”

Happy Valley (early 1997)

“Happy Valley have the same name of the BBC drama series which was actually filmed close to where I live now. It was brilliant experience playing out in Hong Kong. It was before the handover and it is a place that never sleeps. I was single at the time and I loved it. It was like playing in the fourth division, but with the lifestyle of a top flight player. 

“In the Happy Valley team I played in there was Martin Kuhl who played for Sheffield United, Birmingham City and Portsmouth. A guy called John Moore who played at Sheffield United and in Holland. We had a goalie who was absolutely nuts called Peter Guthrie. I don’t think he played any pro games in England, but his opening line to anyone who would listen was that he was Terry Venables’ first signing for Spurs. He never played for them! He dined out on that.

“We won the league and we were living on an Island outside Hong Kong central. For some strange reason we ended up with green swimming caps on the night we won the league. We played in green so we must have thought it was going to be funny to put them on. We went out and had a really good drink. The thing was the later you went home, the smaller the boat you went home on. So if you went across in the middle of the afternoon you’re on a big catamaran, a big double-decker thing. The later it got you ended up on a small row-a-boat with a bloke rowing you home. Me and Martin Kuhl were going home after we had won the league and we ended up outside the boat on a little ledge where we could high-five everyone. It was pitch black in the Hong Kong harbour and it wasn’t actually until the following morning where we realised we could have actually died. No-one would have known we were in the harbour.

“I represented Hong Kong twice in the Carlsberg Lunar New Year tournament. We played Mexico and Bulgaria and I played against Luis Hernandez for Mexico and Hristo Stoichkov for Bulgaria. They weren’t bad players.”

Return to Huddersfield (1997)

“When I came back I was looking for a club and it was probably the fittest I’ve ever been. I was about 21 and I just happened to ring George (Mulhall) at Halifax. He said that they had a game against Huddersfield that night and he told me to bring my boots, but he couldn’t guarantee me a game. With ten minutes to go he called me over and said ‘come on then, you can have the last ten minutes’. We were 1-0 down. I came on and set the goal up for one a-piece and I then scored the winner so we beat Huddersfield 2-1. Gerry Murphy (former Huddersfield head of academy) rang me the following morning and told me he’d been speaking to the manager (Brian Horton) about me ever since he (Horton) had been appointed. I’m not sure that was true as Gerry was another one who didn’t like how I was. I wasn’t dedicated enough really. I had the ability, but I wasn’t prepared to give up things. When you look back it isn’t the right way to do things and there’s no-one to blame about how my football career other than me. There was too much emphasis on my mates and having a pint with them. You can’t do both.”

Huddersfield Town sacking 

“I played about half-a-dozen reserve games in pre-season and I scored in all of them. I was sub in a few first team friendlies too. I think we played Wigan and I vaguely remember playing Sheffield Wednesday and playing against Des Walker and Benito Carbone. The first game of the season was Oxford away. We lost 2-0 and I came on as sub for the last 15 minutes and Brian Horton never spoke to me again. I was the only player from that squad to get dropped and I only played 15 minutes. This is the season where Huddersfield went 14 games without a win at the start of the season.

“It all came to a head when it was Nottingham Forest at home on a Friday night, live on Sky. Brian Horton said in the afternoon that he wasn’t naming the team and that everyone was in the squad. Back to me not being disciplined; I looked at Ian Lawson who hadn’t been playing either and I said ‘I’m not going all the way home to come all the way back just to sit and watch again’. I’ll blame Ian Lawson, but it was probably me, I just said ‘do you fancy going for a pint instead’? So we ended up going to Flares in Huddersfield. We didn’t get back to the ground until seven o’clock. Brian Horton said ‘you have been here at six o’clock, where’s you been, have you had a pint’? I said ‘I’ve had a couple, but you haven’t spoken to me for two months so I didn’t think I’d be playing’. That was it, he said ‘contract terminated’. They lost again that night and he got sacked.

“Peter Jackson took over and I rang Jacko and he said ‘everyone was aware of what went on so on my first day I can’t be seen to be looking out for my mates’. That was fair enough. I’ve got a lot of time for him.”

Glentoran 

“I then had a month over at Glentoran with Tommy Cassidy. I used to fly over on the Friday and stay at a hotel called the Park View. I went over with a goalkeeper called Wayne Russell who was on loan from Burnley. One week they had a game on the Tuesday so they asked me to stay over and do some training on the Sunday and Monday. We were playing Armagh away and it felt like it was November or near to Bonfire Night as there were explosions everywhere. After that game I thought ‘I’m not going back here’. For a lad of 19 or 20 I was s****ing myself. We weren’t allowed out of the hotel we stayed in and if we did we were told not to speak! I did play in the Glentoran-Linfield which was a scary experience. As we came out to start the game there was armed guards with machine guns and armoured Land Rovers. I got subbed at half-time and it was 0-0. I was in the shower and I thought ‘I haven’t upset anyone at 0-0 so that will do for me, let’s call it quits here, this isn’t how I want to play my football’.”

One of the Snodin’s never rang me again 

“I didn’t actually sign for Doncaster (despite what Wikipedia says), I don’t know how that has come about? The closest I came to Doncaster when I was out in Hong Kong playing for Instant Dict. Instant Dict were managed by Ian Baird who used to play for Leeds and was mates with both (Ian and Glynn) Snodin’s who were managing Doncaster. Ian Baird had told them to come and watch me so they came out. Afterwards me and either Ian or Glynn went out for a beer to have a chat. I can’t remember much about the rest of the night. What I do know is he never rang me again!” 

Second Stint in Hong Kong

Midwood went back to play for Happy Valley. He later signed for Instant Dict during his three years back in Hong Kong

“I first went at Christmas 1996 and I finished the season off there. Happy Valley offered me a contract to stay, but I was supposed to be getting married the following summer. I had also a little baby. So I struggled to settle down with a club after coming back and I was meant to be getting married and I didn’t have any money coming in. That took its toll and we ended up splitting up. So I thought I may as well go back to Hong Kong. I got offered a deal by Happy Valley and I just packed my bags and went. I stayed out there for two-and-half years. 

“The whole experience of being out there merges into one long holiday. There’s trips that my family went on. As part of the deal you got flights paid for so they could come out. Any mates who I had time off, I’d get them a flight. You worked hard while you were training, but it was that hot you’d do a couple of hours in the afternoon and then you’d just go out. You would sleep it off and do the same the next day.”

Ossett Town (2001-02)

“Gary Brook was the manager of Ossett Town and he was someone I’d played at Halifax with. Craig Boardman was another who I knew from Halifax. We had a decent side and we did well. Matty Smithard was around too. 

“The reason I left Ossett was because I had fallen out of love with the game. I had a fall out with Gaz Brook because I preferred playing with my mates for Ovenden in the West Riding County Amateur League. I played for Ovenden instead of Ossett one Saturday. I might have been getting £80 a game for Ossett, but I wasn’t bothered. Money has never been a driving factor for me, maybe it should have been because I might have done a bit better.”

Move to Farsley (late 2001/02 season)

“Farsley was the best time I had in football. I found a club which really suited me. Farsley were struggling in the league and Martin Haresign must have rung Gary Brook about me. It was what I needed at the time, a fresh challenge and someone saying they wanted me. Farsley needed to win four or five of their last nine games to stay up. I signed the night before we were due to play Gretna who were near the top and about to go into the Scottish Leagues that summer. Farsley had written that game off. We beat them 3-1 and I got a hat-trick. It wasn’t a bad start.

“We won five out of the last nine and I scored seven goals. It was just perfect. Everybody at that club all loved the same thing. It was such a family club that you worked hard in training, gave everything when you played and then you all enjoyed the rewards afterwards.”

Trip to Tenerife with Farsley 

“John Palmer had said if we stayed up he’d pay for a trip to Tenerife. He must have thought that was never going to happen! As it got closer to the end of the season when we were picking up wins the trip was starting to gain momentum. The lads were like ‘Mids and Beechy (Stuart Beech) are going to get us to Tenerife’. We got to Tenerife and after two days we’re on the sun loungers as you are on every day Damian Henderson comes down and the lads start singing happy birthday. He was 30. Lee Connor stands up and says ‘seen as we didn’t know it was your birthday we haven’t got you anything, you’re not going to do anything today, you won’t lift a finger’. You start thinking ‘what’s going on here’. I’ll leave this to your imagination, but Damian Henderson literally didn’t lift a finger that day.”

Arrival of Lee Sinnott to Farsley (summer 2003)

“I’ll hold my hands up, I was totally against his appointment even though I knew Sinbad from Huddersfield as a player. It was because I didn’t like how Haresy was sacked. I thought it was disgusting. When he got sacked I said ‘he brought me here, I aren’t staying’. A few of the lads who had been with Haresy for years said ‘don’t go, let’s see what happens’. Lee Sinnott came in and he was absolutely fantastic.

“I’m a bit surprised he didn’t do better after he left Farsley. When he went to Port Vale I’d said to a few lads that he would be a good manager. His attention to detail in that (NPL Division One) league at that time was something I’d never seen before. You’d have never thought he’d take Farsley to the Conference four years after he got the job.”

Stuart Beech, the singer…

“I think my best goal has got to be from a game at Bridlington with Farsley in the FA Cup. My missus’ mum and dad had a caravan in Filey so me and Stuart Beech had arranged to stay the weekend anyway. Radio Leeds had been in touch to ask if they could interview me after the game over the phone. We were 2-1 down in injury-time and we were going out of the FA Cup. I was half-thinking ‘well we’re staying in Filey tonight so it’ll be a good night anyway’. The ball has come out from a corner after the centre-half has headed it. I was around the penalty spot and I spun round and properly over-head kicked it and it hit the top corner. So we had earned a replay. Radio Leeds rung me and I somehow got in that we fancied our chances in the replay because we’ll have Stuart Beech back. They said ‘has he been injured’? I said he had applied for a singing competition on the TV and he got to the quarter-final stage so he hadn’t been able to play football incase he got injured, but we thought he’d gone out so he should be available for the replay. My mum was listening to the radio and she rang to ask ‘is Stuart really a singer’? I said ‘I don’t know where that came from, but I may as well make it as interesting as possible’.”

The 2004/05 NPL Premier Division scandal 

“We won the league and we were the best team in the league. We played Spennymoor twice early doors when they had loads of cash and it was like ‘these are going to take some beating’. They turned us over at their place and we got a point at home and it was a great point. As the season went on their money dried up and all the players floated to the point where they couldn’t fulfil their fixtures. The only fair way to deal with it if someone resigns is you expunge their record. You can’t start giving teams who haven’t played them yet a 3-0 victory. 

“So they expunged Spennymoor’s record which meant we won the league and we even celebrated winning the league. Then after the season had finished they overturned the decision to expunge the record and gave the teams who hadn’t played them 3-0 wins. I think it was an absolute disgrace. No league had added points after a team had resigned or been kicked before and no league has ever never done it since. It left a bad taste for sometime. 

“We dropped from first to third and we had to have a meeting to discuss whether we were going to take part in the play-offs which the league had had to delay for a week because of legal action. I’m an outspoken person and I said I didn’t think we should compete in the play-offs. We had been told by the league ahead of our last game that if we won it we would win the league. The rest of lads managed to convince me to play in the two play-offs games. We got to the final and ended up losing on penalties at Workington.”

End of the Road in Non League (August 2005)

“I snapped my Achilles in the first game of that (2005/06) season. I’d done pre-season and I was flying. I felt on top of the world. I loved the club so much that when Lee Sinnott pulled to one side during the previous season to say Harrogate Town (in a higher league) wanted to talk to me, I told him I wasn’t interested in speaking to them even though they could offer me more money. In the first game of the season we got a free kick on the edge of the halfway line and I was on the 18-yard line. I took a step back and it felt like someone had toe-poked me just below my calf. That was it.”

After Farsley 

“I tried to come back too soon because I missed it so much. I was training back at Farsley within three or four months. Because I was carrying that leg different, the ligaments in that ankle went so then I was out again. I just never got back playing at that level, although I did play some good Sunday morning football, but not to the level of Farsley.

“I managed Ealandians for a bit in the Yorkshire Old Boys League and I bumped into a few of the old Farsley lads in that. A lot played for Stanningley because Martin Haresign managed them. The first time I took the Ealandians over to Stanningley we stayed for a few hours in Haresy’s pub, it was fantastic.”

Chris Green (2017/2018)

“It is quite a sad story, but I came out of playing retirement a couple of years ago. I’ve got a minibus because I have quite a big family and it makes it easier going to the coast. None of the local football clubs have any brass for a coach so Greetland asked me to take them over to Wetherby for a County Cup game. Quite a few of my school mates were playing as well. I watched the game and they drew 2-2 and won on penalties. The skipper Chris Green took the last penalty and smashed it in the top corner, absolute brilliant penalty. In the bar afterwards there was no sign of Greeny. He was outside because he was struggling. He said he couldn’t cool down, but he said he would be okay. You could see that he was struggling when we were getting back on the minibus. The plan was to stop off at a few pubs on the way back so I said I’d drop the lads off somewhere and then take him to the hospital. He was sat next to me on the bus and we got five minutes down the road when I realised we had a problem. We had to pull over and call an ambulance. He kept saying ‘I’m really tired Mids’. I said ‘that’s fine, just don’t go to sleep, the ambulance is on its way’. He never lost consciousness between the ambulance arriving and going, but by the time we got back to Greetland, we had had a phone call to say he had died. It was unreal. 

“It knocked everyone and I rang Lenny (Mark Leonard) the manager and said ‘if you don’t mind, even if I don’t play, I’d like to sign on and finish the season for Greeny’. Lenny said ‘yes, absolutely’. I did a bit of training and it came to the semi-final of the (Halifax AFL Challenge) cup and he put me as sub. It was the boggiest pitch ever and after 30 minutes we were 2-0 down to Luddenden Foot. The centre-forward started limping so he told me to get ready. I thought ‘an hour on that pitch, I don’t think so Lenny’. As I’m getting ready, they go through one-on-one and our young goalkeeper comes out brave as a lion and dislocates his shoulder. So Lenny says ‘Mids you go upfront, we’ll put x in midfield, we’ll change the centre-halves’. I said ‘Lenny, that’s too many changes, leave it exactly how it is and I’ll go in goal’. He said ‘have you played in goal before’? I said yes and told him not to worry. 

“In the first minute I was on, a cross was heading for the top corner and I dived full length and tipped it over the bar. Lenny was like ‘not bad’. Every goalie fancies themselves as a striker and every striker fancies themselves as a goalie so I’d done a bit in goal with Craig Taylor back in my Huddersfield days. I had a good game in goal and we drew 2-2 so it went to penalties. I saved two and we got to the final down at The Shay. 

“We had some t-shirts made and people were saying it is because of Greeny and said we had to win it for him. We played down at the Shay against a team of young lads. Lenny said he would name a young side and bring the experience on later on. We were 2-0 down with 30 minutes to go and Lenny made three subs. The combined age of those three subs was 126. We were all in the same year at school and all 42. We scored in the 93rd minute to win 3-2. The picture they’re got at the club is of everyone on the Shay pitch with the trophy and with the t-shirts with Greeny’s face on. They’ve taken the roof of the stand off and in the clouds is Greeny’s face. It is probably one of my best memories of football ever. It is quite a sad story, but something I’m quite proud of. I haven’t kicked a ball competitively since. I gave one of the young lads my boots and said ‘that’ll do for me’.”

Michael Midwood was interviewed by James Grayson 

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. When we properly 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.

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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.