100 years of laughs
(and some football was played, too!)
ANON-LEAGUE football club based in Derbyshire will be celebrating its centenary this year, cementing its place among some of the oldest non-league clubs in the county.
In recognition of Old Bemrosians’ longevity, a presentation will be held at the Don Amott Arena – the home of Mickleover – to celebrate the occasion in June this year.
Over the last 100 years, the club has seen many ups and downs, some of which have been “lost in the annals of time”, according to one of the club’s ex-goalkeepers, Malcolm Dexter.
Malcolm said: “We’ve got a couple of players who were there in the fifties and sixties who have all the knowledge from back then. And we’ve also got players who’ve had their sons and then grandsons who’ve played, so for some it goes back three generations. It became a real family club. I played for 34 years, and my son has played for them, too.”
The club started in 1924, but it wasn’t then called Old Bemrosians until later on, after Bemrose School was founded in 1930.
Currently, it competes in the Alfreton and District Sunday League, and also fields walking football sides for some of the older players.
These days, many of the club’s explayers are scattered around the globe, now living in Europe and the USA, and even as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Although they may be separated by thousands of miles, Malcolm says that when they get together or talk over WhatsApp, the banter is “just the same as it was”.
“We all have a strong bond even today”, he said, “and some fantastic memories. In 1994 we played in the Midland Amateur Alliance Senior Cup and the club hadn’t played in it – or got to the final of it – since 1952.
We got this cup that was worth around £5,500 that was filled with Marston’s Pedigree and God knows what else. Malcolm Dexter
“The team that we’d played [Sherwood Amateurs], we’d lost to them 6-0 away and 6-0 at home so we thought we’d get a right pasting; the final was held at Kimberley Town FC’s [dissolved in 2012] ground [The Stag Ground].
“We’d been out on the night before and ended up beating them 1-0 – that’s just football for you isn’t it, it’s just the way the game sometimes runs.
“So then we got this cup that was worth around £5,500 that was filled with Marston’s Pedigree and God knows what else – most of us were quite drunk as you can probably imagine – but we then left the cup in one of the pubs.
“That story definitely sticks out in my mind, definitely – we did manage to get it back thankfully.”
The club also went down on tour to Germany in 1990: “It was the year of the World Cup, a group of 15 of us went over there and played a German side and got very drunk, as you can expect – this makes us sound like a load of drunkards, really!”
Although not as much of a community hub as it once was, according to Malcolm, Old Bemrosians has long been a place that has brought friends old and new together.
Malcolm, who started playing at 16, met his best friend John Thatcher there two years later, The two remain close mates to this day.
With such strong memories of past successes in the minds of so many ex-players, the community hopes that in the not-too-distant future, success will come again for Old Bemrosians.
The centenary event will be held on June 29 at the Don Amott Arena.