I grew up in Hampsthwaite & spent my entire childhood playing football. Every evening or afternoon I had free I was kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush. I'd be playing Knockout Wembley in the street with my friends, we'd be down the post office on a regular basis picking up a balloon of a 99p football and not an hour later we'd be back after bursting it on a bed of roses or someone's garden chain. I swear we kept that place in business some years!

After school we'd be straight down the Football Pitch with everyone from the bus for a game, people would be hopping over their back garden fences into the field, there was an abundance of us playing well into the night. Every night.

The really big news that used to get us buzzing was when "the nets are up".
It would get around the village pretty quickly as people went knocking from door to door.

The Sunday team were obviously playing at home the following day which meant the Saturday side had left the nets up over night. For a kid in the 80's this was absolute gold, the holy grail! We'd be down there all evening, taking turns in goal until it was pitch black.

I'd regularly gone down the road on a Saturday afternoon growing up & sat in the trees by Hampsthwaite beck watching Hampsthwaite United play & always said when I was old enough that's what I'd do too.

In the summer of 1993 I got a knock on my front door from one of the local lads in the Village inviting me to grab my boots & come down to football training. I've been at the Club ever since.

When I started playing we weren't a great side, our First Team were in Division Two of the Harrogate & District League, our Reserves were in Division Four and our Sunday Team were in Division 2 of the Claro League.

It was the 1993/94 season, The FA Premier League had just completed it's inaugural season and Football was thriving. The Harrogate & District League had 5 Divisions on a Saturday totaling 65 teams & the Claro League on a Sunday had the same, 5 Divisions with 58 teams. In total over the course of each weekend 123 Football Teams played in the Harrogate & District.

Today, the 2016-17 Season will see 30 sides compete in the Harrogate & District League, 10 in the Premier Division, 11 in Division One & 9 in Division Two.

The Claro League is even more horrifying, 6 sides compete in Division One & 9 contest Division Two. 15 Teams! That equates to 45 sides down from 123 in 24 Seasons.

Harrogate & District Association Football League 1993-94 Final Tables
Premier Division
Bardsey
Beckwithshaw
Magnet Sports
Wetherby Athletic
Kirk Deighton
Ripon City Magnets
Bedale
Boston Spartans
Vickers Defence
St. John Fisher

Division One
Boroughbridge Reserves
Spa Athletic
Thirsk Falcons
Pool
Burley Trojans
Knaresborough Town Reserves
Pateley Bridge
Harlow Hill
Ripon City Magnets Reserves
Magnet Sports Reserves
Tockwith
Christ Church Old Boys

Division Two
Kirkby Malzeard
Whixley
Hampsthwaite United
Beckwithshaw Saints Reserves
Ripon Red Arrows
Pool Reserves
Bramhope
Bardsey Reserves
Bedale Town Reserves
St. John Fisher Reserves
Kirk Deighton Rangers Reserves
Spa Athletic Reserves
Killinghall Nomads
Harold Styans

Division Three
Pannal Sports
Bramham
Vickers Defence Reserves
Harlow Hil Reserves
Grafton
Wetherby Athletic Reserves
Rudgate
Christ Church Old Boys Reserves
Harold Styans Reserves
Burley Trojans Reserves
Boston Spartans Reserves
Thirsk Falcons Reserves
Ripon Red Arrows Reserves

Division Four
Dalton Athletic
Pannal Sports Reserves
Stone Trough Celtic
Bardsey A
Bramhope Reserves
Pool A
Unison
Bedale Town A
Helperby
Tockwith Reserves
Otley SC Reserves
Hampsthwaite United Reserves
Thirsk Falcons A
Killinghall Nomads Reserves

Claro Sunday League 1993-94 Final Tables
Division One
Bardsey
Atlanta
Boroughbridge
Dragon
Sherwood
Scholes
Ripon City Magnets
Darley

Division Two
Oakdale
Coach & Horses
Harrogate Police
Oak Beck
Atlanta Reserves
Ripon Legion
Harrogate Hospital
Harlow Hornets
Summerbridge
Sherwood Reserves
Boroughbridge Reserves
Kirk Deighton

Division Three
Royal Mail
Garforth Miners
Burton Leonard
Men's Catholic Club
Studley Royal
Knox Arms
Dragon Reserves
Ripon City Magnets Reserves
Hampsthwaite United
National Power
Barsey Reserves
Atlanta A

Division Four
Wetherby Athletic
Dishforth
Savepack
Rowan Tree Rovers
East Keswick
British Library
Granby
Kirk Deighton Reserves
Summerbridge Reserves
Tanfield United
Helperby
Bramham
Men's Catholic Club Reserves
Scholes Reserves

Division Five
Cross Keys
Harlow Rovers
Coach & Horses Reserves
National Power Reserves
Boroughbridge A
Studley Royal Reserves
Oakdale Reserves
Sawley
Menwith Hill
Darley Reserves
Knox Arms Reserves
Vale of York

It's with this background & this league structure I'm deliberately looking to invoke nostalgia. Have a look at the depth of local football 20 years ago. The professional game hasn't shrunk, but ours has...

I remember scoring the winner at Kirby Malzeard in April 1996 that got us promoted from the 4th Division, the fifth tier at the time. There was a real depth to every Division & a real sense of achievement each time you worked your way up through them. The same in 1998 when we won the 3rd Division, that sense of depth perhaps illustrated best by the 75 points from an available 78 we took from 26 League Games.

I would pinpoint a very slow decline in numbers around the turn of the milennium. For us initially at the end of the 2002/03 Season an ageing First Team squad who'd played together for years all decided to finish playing, aside from 3 or 4 of us under 30, this left very few players to continue running both sides. The First Team had struggled in the Premier Division that season & were relegated to Division One.

Reluctantly we had no choice but to take a step back with the Club and continue on with just one side on a Saturday in the 3rd Division. It was here we'd stay for the best part of the next 10 years.

Things got harder still. In 2005 we were forced by Hampsthwaite parish council into looking for a new Home. Our 25 year lease on Feast Field had ended & it was deemed they would prefer to build a children's playground and wanted the space for two junior pitches.

We moved to the Harrogate Stray, a location buzzing with football matches on both a Saturday and Sunday, back to back, side to side. We were lucky to get a pitch.

The Club maintained this status quo until the 2010/11 Season. While still being affiliated with and ultimately responsible to Hampsthwaite Sports Club, despite not having kicked a ball in Hampsthwaite for 5 years, a small group of members at the Club recognized the drain on Club resources this had become.

We were pumping money each season into a cricket pavillion we hadn't used in half a decade. years and years worth of accumilated Club funds had inexplicably completely disappeared, the Club committee at the time were unable to clarify where these resources had gone. Allegedly the money had gone towards planning for a new Football Pitch in Hampsthwaite that never materialized & we were left with no alternative but to resign from the Sports Club with an entire Club's history, balance and accounts up in smoke.

Two weeks before the start of that season we had a handful of players signed on, we had no money, we were at our lowest ebb. From this point onwards we've grown into the Club we have today.

With the effort and determination of a small group of individuals we brought the Club back from virtual extinction and rebuilt it in 4 short years into the strongest it's ever been.

We were in the 3rd Division, we'd spent the best part of a decade lingering in the bottom 3. Winning wasn't something we were accustomed to, getting beaten on a regular basis was. We didn't care. We just loved to play football & turned up every week regardless.

We sourced a sponsor from a local pub, The Little Wonder, we changed the Club Colours to predominantly Red, we made a conscious effort to getting the word out we were looking for football players, anyone, anyone at all, just to fill a shirt.

With a core group of no more than 16 of us and most weekends 11 or 12 we got promoted.

The following season, we grew again. We secured a mid-table finish in Division Two and we reached the Hulme Cup Final as a Second Division side against West Yorkshire League opposition.

It was our first Cup Final in 13 years and really laid the ground for what was to come.
We'd started getting the Club's name out there on social media, the Cup Final that day in Knaresborough was attended by more people than Harrogate Town got earlier in the afternoon, mainly thanks to an enthusiastic social media campaign drumming up supporters. We were roundly expeced to embarrass ourselves on the evening of April 28th 2012 and when we equalized that day it was the nosiest Hampsthwaite goal ever celebrated.

Ultimately We lost the game 3-1 but we went down fighting and it turned out to be one of the most memorable days in the 25 years I've been here.

It was this game that got us back on the map. People had heard of us again, people wanted to play for us, so we set out with the intention of growing the Club. We applied for a Reserve team at the start of 2012/13, the first time we'd had one since 2002/03.

This was the point the league began to noticeably shrink year on year at an alarming rate. At the end of this season, we lost the 3rd Division & the League was reduced to Premier, Division One & Division Two.

We were bucking this trend, again using social media to get the word out. Who wants to play football? We didn't care who we signed, we just wanted people who wanted to play, bodies in a shirt, ultimately that's what football should be about. People who love the game who want to play it. The winning would come later.

Because we had this second side, it allowed an overflow of players we couldn't fit into the First Team, as well as ensuring long-serving players at the Club weren't just cast aside as we signed better players for the First Team. One of the main dangers in losing people is a lack of commitment to them and their understandable lack of interest as a consequence. We are committed to ensuring this doesn't happen and that commitment is repaid by people who know they will play regular football because of it.

We Won the Division Two Championship that season, ending a 15 year wait for silverware.

The following year we re-started our Sunday Team, giving us 3 sides over the course of the weekend & our Reserves reached the Alverton Trophy Final.

2014/15 & we Won the Division One Championship and returned to the Premier Division where we now currentlt reside.

Last season saw Hampsthwaite United leave Harrogate Stray to move to a temporary Home in Knaresborough due to a water leak.
We have since moved as close to Hampsthwaite as we could ever possibly hope by taking on new facilities at Pennypot Lane.

We were the last side playing in the Harrogate & District Footbal League to play on the Stray. Once buzzing with Killinghall Nomads, Pannal Sports, Harold Styans, Unison, Hampsthwaite United etc. it now hosts no open-aged games on a Saturday afternoon. I personally find that very sad.

So the big question is why is this happening?

I don't have a definitive answer but I do have a number of observations I've made over the course of time. If you scan through the league standings I've listed above you'll notice a number of sides have come & gone over the years but most importantly virtually every Club in the league had at least a Reserve Team & many of them had 3rd Teams as well.

As I've analysed this, I've come to notice that a number of the Clubs who no longer play in the league more recently, still exist. Not only do they still exist but they play at what we would deem to be a higher standard, whereas some don't.

Clubs like Wetherby Athletic now play out of the West Yorkshire League, however their 4th B-Team actually play in the York League, as do Bramham. So it's not necessarily a case of Clubs folding, it's a case of Clubs finding other Leagues to play in.

It's easy to blame the 'Xbox generation' but I think that's something of a poor excuse. Yes the way we socialise has changed, but so has the way we market our Clubs to potential players.

The easy answer is to point the finger and blame the leagues. I've done it. I've sat there and said things like it's not what it used to be, it was better back in the day, there aren't enough quality fixtures & there's definitely not the quantity.

That's easy to say, but the Clubs need to hold themselves accountable for this too. I think the problem is deeper than just the leagues. I don't believe they've had much support or direction from the authorities that sanction them for a start. I know since I last wrote County have asked to attend the Harrogate & District League Management meeting, but that was off the back of my concerns, not something they set out to do of their own accord, however I applaud them for taking immediate notice and doing so.

I'd start speaking to the Clubs, why are Bramham playing in the York League now? Why are Wetherby doing the same? Why did Rawdon & Horsforth go to the West Yorkshire League?

The answer may well be to play at a higher standard... that being said I don't believe the West Yorkshire 2nd Division is any better than the Harrogate & District League 1st Division. Rawdon & Horsforth seem to be going home with 3 points every week, with similar results to those they achieved last season in the Harrogate League.

What can be done about these problems and what can be done to grow the amount of local Football Clubs?

The whole purpose of my writing this article is to invoke debate. We should be getting local Clubs round the table, sitting down with every Club, regardless of which League they play in & asking them what they'd like to see happen next.

I've pointed out the League's shrinking, faster than ever each season, but some of the Clubs aren't all folding, they're just playing elsewhere.

I'm aware it's probably not possible but I'd like to see County intervene at this point and ultimately the FA. I wrote last week asking County what their idea of grassroots football was? What was it they actually clarified as Grassrooots?

To their credit they responded: "In regards to your question about what we class as grassroots, it is anything from supporting Junior Football, Adult Male Football, Women and Girls Football, Disability Football, the Recreational offer, developing coaches, developing referees, mini soccer development, National League club & league development and a whole lot more besides – anything to do with football that takes place in West Riding that we can support. So far this season we have already supported 13 new open age teams to develop by giving them a small amount of funding to get started as well as supporting another 20 applications for the development of adult teams to the Football Foundation for Grow the Game funding. I appreciate that you are an existing team and therefore you are unable to retrospectively apply for a lot of grants, but the support that we can give you is based more around developments within your league (finding a solution to the lack of teams in a division for example), other opportunities such as brokering conversations with the LA around facility issues, ensuring that any opportunities to use new facilities (such as the 3G pitch that is due to be built at St John Fishers School) and any other issues that you may need support with."

I didn't expect a response to my article so the fact I got one clearly shows they are listening and are willing to listen. So rather than just moaning, we as Football Clubs need to start speaking. We need to talk to each other about how we'd like to see local Football develop in the area & we need to start taking these ideas to County and our local leagues as well as each other.

It's all well & good turning up at an AGM, giving a lazy thumbs up to the latest league constitution with a handful of fixtures and saying yey or ney to a proposed new rule but we as Clubs need to start doing more than that.

In my previous article An Open Letter to Harrogate FA, West Riding County FA, Harrogate & District Association Football League & Local Football Clubs I touched upon our immediate problems, a lack of fixtures and a lack of referees.

I touched on the fact our Reserves will complete 8 of 16 league games on October 29th. If I'm going to highlight problems, I also need to make suggestions on how to combat this lack of fixtures.

An immediate suggestion would be a 3rd round of fixtures, with both sides going halves on the referee costs. Alternatively I would break the Divisional Cup, the Alverton Trophy, down into two groups of 4 & 5 sides, and have the tournament initially played as group games with the top two sides in each group going through to contest the Semi-Finals.

To combat the shortage of referees, I would suggest staggered kick offs and appoint a referee locally to two of these staggered games, thus allowing both games to be officiated and giving the referees the opportunity to double their income on a Saturday.

I personally would like to see a complete rethink around how Football is arranged in the local area. We've all got aspirations to play at County level and that may well be something we all have to look at shortly if the rot isn't stopped at local level - because it will be the lowest level we'd be able to apply to.

I think the big push a couple of seasons ago with regards to Standard Chartered hindered a lot of sides. County were initially trying to make it mandatory, there was a huge lack of understanding as to what it actually was, what the requirements were and how you could obtain it in the first place.

There seems to be more and more 'red tape' like this each new season. I think that scared a lot of people off running a Club, it definitely scared people off starting a Club.

I put that to County and they responded with "There has been lots of research conducted that says those clubs that are Charter Standard on the whole develop and grow more teams than those teams that aren’t Charter Standard. In relation to what is required for Charter Standard, particularly from an Adult Club point of view, we would hope that the standards required would mirror what would be expected of a well-run club anyway."

I understand the above & that's a fair point however I believe it's been made too hard to run a Football Club. Instead of making it as easy as possible, what's occurred is new requirement after new requirement.

We've looked at applying to the West Yorkshire League next season, that requires Charter Standard, but it's also a "Step 7 league and therefore have the ground and facility requirements in place that are set by the FA. Ground and facility requirements naturally increase the higher up the pyramid you get to ensure that the level of football mirrors the quality of the playing / ancillary accommodation as well as the infrastructure within the clubs."

Now this absolutely is not a criticism of the West Yorkshire League as it's a level we'd aspire to playing at but I couldn't help notice one of the major requirements to qualify as a Step 7 facility is 3 or more shower heads!

It seems to me the focus on what a Football Club should be and should have has been sidetracked from the real issue, the Football Teams. It used to be okay to change in a local pub, or in a garage by a pitch. Now we have to have running water. In reality, who actually cares? Surely the Number 1 priority should be playing Football, not having a wash!

I've seen sides apply to the local leagues that have a pitch but no changing rooms so they're declined. Since when was getting a wash the biggest issue? Back in the day we rarely had shower facilities. I remember the old pitch-side hut at Helperby, the garage at Thirsk they kept their goals in. At risk of disclosing our players' hygiene habits, very few shower after a game, they do so at home. If you could offer them more opposition with the only real compromise being a lower quality, or at times no, changing facility they'd all take that option without complaint.

The answer here of course is the 3G facilities. I believe for local football to begin to grow again the league structure and format needs a complete reboot.

We need a focus on more 3G floodlit facilities. People tell me the younger lads are all off playing on their Xbox, which is why they aren't playing football anymore. I can tell you now I see plenty of them at Football Mundial on a Monday & Wednesday night.

The company named sides still exist too, just as 6-a-side corporate teams, rather than 11-a-side Saturday or Sunday sides.

The interest is still there, we just need to completely review what local football is and what it should be.

I'd like to see 11-a-side open aged football during the week. That is the future of local leagues at the level we currently play at. It won't take that many 3G facilities to make this a reality either. With 7 & 9pm Kick Offs at two locations on any given day you're looking at 2 fixtures a night, accomodating 4 sides.

With two 3G locations in Harrogate - St. John Fishers, Rossett and potentially the CNG you're looking at 6 games, 12 sides on any given night. Granted we might not be able to use the CNG for something like this but if there were a commitment from local authorities, a commitment from the FA, we don't need many 3G facilities for a legitimate floodlit league to be played.

Whether it's floodlit or not, football needs to be made easily accessible again and by that I mean it needs to be made easy to start a side. Football Mundial make it easy, no joining fee, at times free football kits, they've got a great format for 6-a-side Football and with it countless teams playing all over the country.

It's with this kind of thinking we need to look to be growing the local game, but as local Clubs we all also need to consider playing in the same leagues, whatever they may be, whether that's the Harrogate League, whether that's a floodlit league.

Ideally what I'd like to see is all Clubs within a certain area playing in the same League. It makes sense at this level in the same way Clubs are located at National Level, whether it's National League North or International Leagues.

If all the Clubs from the same area played in the same area we'd have a League that once again thrived with the quality of opposition and quantity of fixtures we all crave.

How that's achieved I don't know. Perhaps local leagues do need to be played midweek so the Clubs that wish to play at County level can do so at weekends. We've only got 30 sides in the Harrogate League now - that's 15 games a week. You could almost play those fixtures floodlit on the existing 3G surfaces in the area, let alone if there were a couple of dedicated 3G locations within a 10 mile radius of each other to accomodate Clubs just outside of that boundary.

This is absolutely something I'd like to see. Whether the Harrogate Leagues liaise with County over this, whether County start the same Flexi-Leagues they have in Leeds or Bradford or perhaps Football Mundial step up with their own proposal - they've already started a veterans league on 3G last month and already it's bigger than the Sunday Claro League with 16 teams to the Claro 15. This speaks volumes.

What do you think?