Danny Frost, one of Barnsley’s greatest Non League strikers, is devoting his life to his ‘nearest club’ Wombwell Main and wants to help them win trophies.
The Iceman is now leading Wombwell’s attack in the Sheffield & Hallamshire County Senior League Premier Division after a wonderful Non League career.
He’s just their on-field talisman as he’s also the head honcho of the very successful Mini Mainers football for young kids. If someone takes a chainsaw to a tree, he’d be a brilliant night watch man as well.
But how the Worsbrough-born striker came to join Wombwell nine years ago as a Sunday League player is a little unusual.
“I’m like a adopted Wombweller and it is quite funny (how I signed for the Sunday side),” Frost tells Non League Yorkshire.
“I moved down Hemingfield and one of the locals Steve Roby, his dad Bill, a Wombwell Main legend as a manager, rocked up at the end of my drive.
“He said ‘ey up, if you don’t sign this, your windows are going through’. It was a signing on form for the Wombwell Main Sunday side and from when I first went up there I settled in straightaway.
“It is not my home-born club, but it is a club I have been at for nine years playing Sunday football and running the Mini Mainers which has been going three years as well what is now the under 8s.
“We have developed five junior teams and filtered a lot of young players into different Wombwell Main teams and other Junior clubs. I’ve had a few who have gone to Magpies, Hoyland Town. Don’t get me wrong, it is created around Wombwell Main, but we are here are any young player.”
Frost is best known for playing for a handful of clubs such as Ossett Town, Pontefract Collieries, Spennymoor Town and of course Shaw Lane Aquaforce. He was Shaw Lane’s talisman during the 2013/14 season and his goals in the final game of the season fired them to promotion out of the NCEL Division One.
Last season because of injury he was on the Stocksbridge Park Steels coaching staff before making a brief playing comeback at Selby Town prior to lockdown.
Location though was a key factor in his decision to drop to Step 7.
“It is a good family club and my bedroom window is 100 yards away from the goal-mouths,” he says.
“I’m in talks with the club about taking a tree down because I can’t see the middle of the pitch, I can only see both goal-mouths from my bedroom window at the minute.
“It is funny because we played a game the other week and I called in and had a drink with the lads in the club and then I went home and the missus said ‘good goal love’ so she must have been watching from the bedroom window.”
He’s one of around 20 NCEL from last season who have turned their backs on Non League Football and opted for Step 7 football. Travelling is a big reason for many. Not for Frost.
“The travelling wasn’t really a factor for me,” he says.
“Originally I had signed for Belper. Obviously I was coming back from the knee injury so was it going to be the last year to push myself?
“I got myself really fit during lockdown, but I had a blip as my knee started to play up again and I didn’t want to be going to Belper and letting the side down by being not fit enough to play.
“With the commitment of having to train twice a week, it just didn’t seem right. I spoke to (Belper boss Grant Black) Blackie and told him the knee was playing up and I didn’t want to leave him in the lurch last minute and leave him with no strikers.
“I then made my decision to fully commit to playing for the Main. I’m 31 and 32 in November and I’ve done 12 years of playing Non League Football.
“There were some weeks where I’d get up and yeah I’d be up for the game, but now especially with moving into my new house across from the Main, I’d look out of window and think ‘I could be playing on that’. Instead last season I was travelling to almost London because Stocksbridge were in the South league last year. It didn’t all add up.”
Worsbrough Bridge have been the epicentre of the exit of players to Step 7 from the NCEL. The backstory is they have lost seven players to the County Senior League because of concerns over travelling and midweek fixtures – which in Worsbrough’s case currently stands at seven prior to the clash with Campion last night.
Frost has sympathy with fellow players – including the youthful Owen brothers, Jack and Liam – who have turned to Step 7 football and can understand their reasons.
“If the season does stop again, they have to make sure the season is doable if it starts again, not just for the players, but the clubs as well,” he said.
“A lot of money does go into away games. You have to get coaches if it is a long distance and the kick off times have to be reasonable. There needs to be time for rest. I remember a few years ago at Shaw Lane, we had three or four games a week to catch up. They have to be realistic on the lads.
“But that (a chaotic schedule) will be a reason if more lads did step down. The pressures (of midweek games) is one and a lot of clubs have struggled to recover from Covid, financially-wise, and I don’t think the wages are there to make it worth the players trekking to Bridlington and your Skegness’ on an evening.
“Lads are factoring in they have to train, play in a midweek game, play on a Saturday and thinking is it really worth it for your £20, £30s? That’s the sort of player who has thought they’ll play with their local side and progress with them.
“That’s what I have done, even though it wasn’t about money for me. I’ve always said at the latter part of my career that I wanted to help Wombwell Main achieve some Saturday football success.”
What the exodus to the County Senior League has done is excite Frost, who is aiming high with Wombwell.
“I don’t ever want to go to a club and settle for second,” he says.
“We want to pushing for that league. I don’t know if (Wombwell manager) Terry (Simon) will disagree with me or not, but I haven’t come just to see my career out. I’ve come to try and win some silverware, whether that’s league’s, cups. We want to push for anything.
“There’s not just us though. There’s a lot of strength gone into different teams. I know JT (Jordan Turner) has gone to Jubliee (Sports). You have the Owen’s and Rollinson’s at Dodworth so they are going to be strong. You have your likes of Danny Barlow who was there before.
“You have North Gawber who did the treble the season before the lockdown. They have 18 players who are going to be there every week and want to fight for each other because they are all good pals.
“There’s going to be no easy games and it is not going to be like it used to be. You used to look at your fixtures and say ‘three, six, nine, 12 points there’. You can’t call the season.
“I think it is going to be just as competitive as the Northern Counties Division One is. With a lot of players dropping out of that league to drop to the County Senior League, there is a lot of teams going to be going for that league this year. I’m excited by it and I think it is the strongest the league has been for some time.
“It is a shame that a lot of the grounds of the teams going for it aren’t going to be up to scratch to get promoted because if they did go up, they’ll be competitive in the league above as well.”
Frost and Worsbrough duo Kieran Hirst and Ash Emmett are Wombwell’s marquee NCEL signings. Wombwell’s opening league game ended in a 3-2 defeat to Penistone Church reserves, but Frost insists the Wombwell squad is strong.
“Kieran and Ash have always dual-signed until fully-committing this year,” he says.
“They are going to be massive for the club as they’re still young lads. We have several others as well and it is a relatively young team. It is me who raises the average!
“We have a lot of strength in depth. We have big Dale Crossland in net and he’s an absolute unit. We’ve got Aaron Tate who has been in-and-around Non League and he’s a strong full-back or centre-half.
“We have a lot of youth coming through which is great. We have reserves, under 19s and even a Sunday side which has a mixture of 17, 18 and 19-year-olds who play in the Premier Division of their league.
“We have a kid called Ryan Wingrove coming through. We spotted him playing Sunday football and he’s a good talent and he gave Selby a few headaches in our friendly the other week. He’ll be one to watch if he keeps his head down and keeps progressing and learning.
“It is probably one of the first times Wombwell Main have had such a solid base where if we do lose a player, someone else can fill back in there.”
For someone who has been around the club for nine years, Frost is well-placed to comment on the development of their ground and club.
There’s loads of reasons for positivity and he claims Wombwell are ambitious and hope to make improvements which would potentially allow them to ascent to the NCEL in the coming years.
“We have good backing of a lot of volunteers behind the scenes and we have a bit of programme in place for the facilities,” he says.
“They have come on loads and the pitch is incredible compared to what it was like eight or nine years ago when I first started at Main.
“Everyone who comes says ‘you’ve done some work on here’. So it is going to go in the right direction. We’re looking to get floodlights up there. We have a few bits to go at and it will be a couple of years before we get anywhere near it (ground grading for NCEL), but the club are working towards it.
“We’ve started hosting Sunday Cup finals which is great for the club and we have a great fanbase as well. I’ve played at a lot of big clubs that have had a good fanbase. Before Covid and the restrictions, I’ve looked on those side-lines and sometimes there’s been 200 or 300 watching.
“We have the junior section and we have players from two-and-half years old going through to 69-year-olds because we have walking football.
“Wombwell is a big town and it has a lot of potential and it has even room for two Wombwell teams and that’ll be interesting next year if Wombwell Town get promoted. It will be a good local derby.”
There’s certainly reasons to be cheerful at Wombwell, but where does the tree cutting rank on the club’s list of priorities? I think that’s what most people are wondering. Maybe there could be a ceremony?
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. As we slowly 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.
Like most organisations, we have been affected financially by the Coronavirus and because of the cancelled Lucille Rollinson Memorial Tournament, we are down on projected income for the year and we have incurred losses in the last few months.
We have not been hit as badly as other organisations, but we do need raise £2000 to put us back at the level we were at in mid-March and enable us to make a difference once again to our players’ lives in the future, without having financial worries. Several of our players are suffering from effects of the lockdown and we are determined to be in the strongest position possible to provide services for them.
Any amount raised above £2000 will be put towards new projects (when the world returns to normal) designed to further benefit people with disabilities and learning difficulties. 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.