Seeing happy faces again is the ultimate prize for Wombwell Main supremo Terry Simon during the Sheffield & Hallamshire County Senior League’s League Cup campaign.
Simon has won plenty of titles during his long managerial career, but the definition of success for him in the next month is different to normal.
The fact he wasn’t downhearted by Wombwell surrendering a 2-0 lead in the Group D curtain-raiser 2-2 draw with Kiveton Park backs up this stance.
“Because we were 2-0 up generally you are disappointed, but and I know a lot of clubs have said this; it is not about football, honestly it isn’t,” Simon told Non League Yorkshire.
“We had a friendly against South Kirkby on the Wednesday and we won 2-0, but the best thing about it was just seeing the lads.
“It was proper old school to like when I played because we got changed at the side of the cricket pitches on the benches. We were taking the mick out of each other and we were just laughing.
“It was the same on Saturday. We turned up and I’d seen the Kiveton piece and that he’d said us and Penistone were the favourites for the group and rightly so, looking at our league positions.
“But I said to the 16 lads that every player will play because of the roll-off-roll-on rule and everyone will play a minimum of 45 minutes.
“It was always about getting everyone on-the-pitch. It was never my intention to say ‘let’s get three points to set us off in the group’.
“The next five games we play; yeah it would be great if we won all five. If we lose the next five would it be a disaster? No it honestly wouldn’t.
“I’m looking at the League Cup as a social thing. It is about getting lads together, having a good laugh and getting some fitness with a view to next season.
“I don’t think anyone envisaged the league finishing and I think what the league committee have done to get this mini-league going is absolutely fantastic.
“They’ve ensured everyone who wants games gets them and there’s been no pressure on clubs to enter.
“I’m just pleased we have got back playing and we’ll get six games and if we’ll lucky enough to get to the knockout stages we may get some more.”
The League Cup began just five days after the Government lifted restrictions on outdoor sport and Simon agrees the third lockdown was one long slog for everyone.
“This lockdown has had a bigger impact on individuals than the first lockdown,” he said.
“I’m not on my own with that view and you could see the impact with some of the comments that you saw from people at all levels of football.
“I do the club’s first team, the under 13s boys and the under 12s girls and I work in education as a head of Year 7 at a secondary school in Barnsley so I’ve seen the massive impact the lockdowns has had on kids and families.
“With the under 13s, we trained for the first time last week and it was like Christmas Day for them. It was so great to see their faces when they saw their mates who they haven’t seen for months because they go to different schools.
“It was a harder lockdown this time around. When you look at the first lockdown which was obviously 12 months ago, the weather was nice.
“We didn’t know how long it was going to last and I remember thinking ‘I could do with a month off work’ and because I love gardening I was thinking ‘I could do this and that in the garden’.
“But the third lockdown has had a massive impact because it was during the winter and you couldn’t get out.”
Although the league campaign was curtailed and left unfinished, Simon still believes the perception of the County Senior League by higher league clubs is at an all-time level.
“I think the league is now held in higher esteem with semi-pro clubs than ever before,” he said.
“I could contact a few people, but say I contacted Grant Black at Belper Town, somebody I coached when he was 11, and asked him for a friendly, I’d like to think he’d say ‘yeah we’ll come and play you Terry, we know it is going to be a competitive game’.
“Two years ago he probably would have said ‘oh we’ll send our under 21s or reserves’.
“If you look at all the friendlies last year involving ourselves, North Gawber and others, they’re all playing NCEL and above sides which is a pat on the back for us as a league. Five years ago it wouldn’t happen, clubs would send under 21s.
“The gap has closed massively and that’s massively down to the influx of players from the higher leagues to our league.
“Every game we played before the league was curtailed was a cracking game.
“Wakefield, great side, North Gawber, another great side as are Swinton, Dodworth, Penistone and others.
“It is a great league and it is in a far stronger position than it ever has before and I’ve been involved in the league for probably 15 years.
“It will be interesting to see in September if the players from the higher leagues stay in our league. I honestly think they will because of the travelling and because the money has gone out of the game.”
Wombwell play Penistone Church in their next Group D fixture tomorrow. Simon’s talisman, the Iceman Danny Frost, is available to leave his bedroom, but he is facing an eleventh hour fitness test to decide whether he will be fit for battle.
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.
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