Denaby Main manager Dean Cooper has hailed the club’s officials and volunteers who are transforming their Tickhill Square home.
The ground is where former NCEL side Denaby United played their football and older followers of Non League will remember floodlights and two stands.
Those old features have gone, but out of the ashes a new clubhouse and stand are part of the transformation and Cooper says the work is outstanding.
“We have progressed a lot in three years and there’s been loads of work done on the ground,” Cooper told Non League Yorkshire.
“Andrew Nota, Fred Nota, Mick Whitehead, Ian Walsh and Graham Till are all Denaby people and they’ve just built a 48 seater stand. The seats came from York City.
“They put their hearts and souls into it and they work tirelessly the club. There is somebody down there everyday doing work on the ground and the pitch.
“We have got a stand at the other side and we’re going to try and get seats in that as well.
“The paving around the ground is nearly finished and the barrier is all finished.
“We have a brand new clubhouse, and the showers and changing rooms are second to none.
“Everything is almost in place, it is just floodlights that we’re lacking.”
On-the-field former Swallownest under 19s boss Cooper and his assistant Peter Copley have overseen a fairly successful year, despite the disruption.
Denaby were top of Division One of the Sheffield & Hallamshire County Senior League with an unbeaten record and they kicked off their League Cup campaign with a stunning 5-0 smashing of Wombwell Town in Group A.
Denaby went 1-0 up after a minute from the penalty spot and were leading 4-0 at the break – not that Cooper was totally surprised as he was over the moon with his players’ preparation.
“We had a feeling that our fitness would pay off on Saturday,” he said.
“The lads have been running themselves and doing 5k runs.
“As soon as we knew we could go back I put a message in the group saying ‘can we get some 5k runs done’?
“Most of the lads were doing a couple of 5k runs a week.
“My son did the 100k for bone cancer in February and a couple of the lads, Christian Baxby and Chris Dickman, joined in with it.
“They are the best set of lads I’ve ever worked with and they are a close knit bunch.
“The lads have learnt a lot in the last two years. We’ve gradually built the squad and we’ve got a lot of young lads.
“This season, Saturday was our 15th game including friendlies and we’ve lost once. That was 3-2 to Swinton in a pre-season friendly.”
The fast start did catch Cooper out as he was still collecting training balls when the penalty was awarded.
“You couldn’t write the start, it was great,” he said.
“A few years ago I brought in a shooting drill that we do just before kick off where we have six attackers and four defenders and the goalkeeper in net.
“It is a game situation where I feed the balls in and it is boom, boom, boom.
“It is three minutes long and we use ten balls and we did it on Saturday. So I went off to collect ten balls and because there’s like a running track round Wombwell’s pitch balls were all over.
“I looked up and we’ve got a penalty and we were 1-0 up. I couldn’t believe it.”
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.
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.
