Evolution In The Shire

 Holbrook St Michaels  1  Mickleover Reserves  0

Central Midlands League - Premier Division South

Admission / Programme - £4 / No

I can walk to Holbrook St Michaels ground from my house, if I so wanted.

But given just how close I am to the delightful little setting in the grounds of the Holbrook Hall Nursing Home, I can count on one hand the number of times I've ventured out to it, and never once on foot!

But what you have got with the club who I shall refer to as HSM going forward, is a great example of the shift in local grassroots football in Derbyshire.

When I first started to get interested in non-league football back in the mid eighties, we were just starting to embark on putting a pyramid structure in place. Belper Town, who I became involved with, had just become a founder member of the Northern Counties East League, and at that time, that was effectively Step 3 of the system, with only the Northern Premier League and the Alliance Premier League sat above it. It's hard to imagine now, back then at the third tier you didn't have to have floodlights! But to be fair, it wasn't a true pyramid, not many sides won the NCE and moved into the next level, in fact of those that did (Shepshed Charterhouse and Spalding Unted), they actually moved to the Southern League. To my memory, in the first five seasons of the NCE (until the NPL formed a First Division), no one actually moved up to the NPL Premier.

What's that got to do with the likes of HSM then? Well, nothing directly, but this is where the story lies. Back then, the local sides at the very base of football on a Saturday, could effectively pick and choose where they played. Some played in the East Midlands Regional League, some played in the Central Alliance, and some plied their craft in the Derbyshire Premier League.

The first shift came in the middle of the Eighties when the Derbyshire Premier League re-branded as the Central Midlands League (they had a vision of filling a void for a Midlands Premier League - it didn't materialise), while the Central Alliance and the East Midlands Regional League joined forces to create the Midlands Regional Alliance.

So what you now had was a CML that spread it's wings across the East Midlands and into Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, while the MRA was very much a local league and perhaps more of a Derbyshire Premier League than the CML had been previously. The MRA wasn't solely Derbyshire based, but the Shire was it's heartland.

The MRA created a lot of interest locally, thinking back to the late eighties and early nineties you had the likes of Belper United, HSM, Holbrook Welfare, Ripley Town, Butterley Brick, Kilburn Welfare, Wirksworth Town, Bargate Rovers plus the reserve side of Belper Town (who kind of drifted in and out).

It was a competitive set up, and over the years some of the champion clubs have gone on to do well and move upwards, examples being Matlock United, Rowsley 86, Belper United, Dronfield Town and Allenton United. But in recent seasons the MRA has been eroded somewhat, and I have to say, no blame is being apportioned here. The number of clubs has fallen anyway as interest dwindles and costs rise, that's not unusual across the Country as a whole. 

Also many clubs no longer run reserve sides, but in addition, as the pyramid has grown in terms of structure, and the CML has tried to establish it's role as having two Step 7 divisions (they would prefer to be a Step 6 league if we were being honest and to be fair, in many cases there is a justification for that), the MRA has become a hunting ground, especially clubs in the Derbyshire area. 

Let's be honest, the CML would be foolish not to bolster it's Derbyshire clubs because surely they must be mindful that the FA at some point will try and force them to become a county league as per the rest of the Country. At the minute, the CML footprint over it's two leagues is huge, and it crosses over other leagues as well. In short, you could carve the CML up and have a much neater structure, leaving it to predominantly focus on Derbyshire.

So where has this left HSM then? They were a long established MRA club for years up until the end of the 2011-12 season when they finished 14th out of 16 clubs in the Premier Division. But, at the end of that campaign they made the move to the CML, joining near neighbours and rivals Belper United who had made the same move a couple of years earlier. The first few years were a struggle, notably the 2014-15 season which saw them lose all but two of their 28 games. However a sixth paced finish in 2018-19 and a seventh place last season gave the club hope that the transition to the new world will be a fruitful one.

This season hasn't been so great though, they currently sit next to bottom in the Southern Division in a league made up of 16 clubs. Geographically though it does tick the boxes, you could argue that games against Graham Street Prims, Mickleover RBL, Cromford & Wirksworth Town, Wirksworth Ivanhoe, Derby Singh Brothers and Mickleover Reserves are local derbies. Hang on a minute, is this not the MRA from years back??

I do keep hearing rumours that the CML and MRA are in discussions about a merger, but that appears to be all they are, rumours, but anyway, let's remain on topic and talk about HSM.

The Holbrook Park ground is a lovely place to watch football, located just of the Makeney Road as you leave the village, you drive up through the entrance to the nursing home and the pitch is to your left. You park behind the goal, while behind the opposite goal is the building that houses the dressing rooms and a small tea bar, while to the side of this is  a small covered shelter. Clad in green material, the building almost hides itself in the trees that line the end of the ground. On the drive side of the pitch are the dugouts and a small area of uncovered seating. It's impossible to imagine the club progressing from this level, getting floodlights would be a planning nightmare I suspect, the ground cannot be enclosed and taking admission can only be done by walking round the pitch collecting money and relying on honesty. And being honest, I don't think many would want to see it change, 'improvements' as far as I can see, would spoil the aesthetic nature of the ground.

The kick off was scheduled for 6pm, and arriving just five minutes before that, I was pleasantly surprised to see the players lining up to enter the field. Other games in the league had been down for 6.30pm starts, which was a tad ambitious, but fair play to both sides for being ready on time in this case.

A modest crowd was in attendance on a lovely evening for football, and a tight game was decided by a goal late in the first half from Holbrook's Fraser Kirk who had a great game, leading the back line superbly. It was a much needed win for Holbrook, who still have a number of games to fit in, and, a Derbyshire Divisional Cup South Final against Derby Singh Brothers to look forward to, when Belper Town can acomodate the fixture!

So that was it, home in five minutes, and to be fair had I so wished I could have headed down to the A6 to watch the Belper Town v Marske United game, but by the time I'd parked up and all that, the game would probably already have been ten minutes old.

I do happen to think in a difficult climate, local grassroots football is thriving in Derbyshire, ok, it may be a bit intertwined with other counties and it may be spread across a number of divisions, but that conundrum is for someone else to solve, because you suspect politics and agendas won't allow it to happen naturally.