MY GRASS-ROOTS HERO: ROBIN HOLDER...

Saint Robin, Birmingham Sunday Football Hero 

by Pete Ray

The Sunday hero I played against and then with, was Robin Holder. He was maybe 5 feet 5 inches tall, maybe 5 feet 5 inches round, with maybe the shortest legs I’ve ever seen on a footballer. His bearded face and thinning hair made him appear older than his years, but his enthusiasm for the game of football was undiminished.  

His mate Jack was also unforgettable. He used to turn up to matches wearing leathers and a cowboy hat, astride a huge motor-cycle. He looked well into his fifties, played usually at right-back or in goal and always changed next to Robin. They would converse like the jailers in ‘Life of Brian’ so that no-one else understood any words they spoke, bar those which could be described as profanities. They would guffaw with laughter at each other’s wisecracks, they broke wind regularly so that the rest of us had some clue as to their previous evening’s meals and none of us had little idea what was being discussed. 

I first became aware of Robin when I played for Mere Green against Robin’s team, Saints, one fine Sunday morning. Inexplicably he was playing in goals and early on I ran through to slip the ball past his solid frame for an early lead.

Soon afterwards I chased a long through-pass, but Robin reached the ball first, gathered it up, scowled and used his forward momentum to dive horizontally at my stomach. Fortunately I saw this robust, cursing torpedo coming and managed to twist in full stride, so that his balding pate rammed my left hip. Puzzled, speechless and sore, I looked down at this missile, which rose amid a flutter of expletives and threw the ball out. The terrified referee chose not to tempt fate and award a penalty.

We netted a second goal soon afterwards, but Saints were then awarded a penalty. Robin naturally wanted to take it but was prevented from doing so by his eloquent, ex-grammar school captain and the spot-kick was subsequently missed. Robin’s language was totally vile and his anger unconfined. He leaned against a post and refused to move for a while but eventually when I played a colleague in on goal, Robin’s tenuous self-control exploded. He torpedoed my team-mate into a shrivelling lump on the turf as he advanced to claim the ball and this time, despite incomprehensible protests from the flying brute, a penalty was in no doubt. We scored and Robin chased out of the goal to berate his colleague who had missed Saints’ penalty only moments before. I think he bellowed something like “…that’s how you take a penalty my good man…” Except that wasn’t what he actually said and the letter ‘f’ was heard a number of times.

I chipped the ball over Robin’s head after the break for my second goal, which did not go down well and Mere Green won the game 5-2, but Robin would not shake hands at the end. At the finish of that season I joined the Saints…

Robin usually played in midfield and it was considered worth free drinks for him if he was NOT cautioned or sent-off during each game and this was remarkable really, as referees quaked when facing the bearded one. Suffice to say that I never had to buy him a drink… He was such a hero.  

So when my nephews-in-law, who also appeared for Saints, (mainly to experience Robin’s involvement in the game of football) went abroad on holiday, I decided Robin should be there at the airport to greet the returning holidaymakers. It was thus in the early hours of a frosty Tuesday morning that my effigy of Robin made his debut and he lit up an otherwise miserable arrivals lounge at Birmingham Airport. The ‘Guy Fawkes’ type model was amazingly like Robin but the real version never knew of his fame, for I subsequently left Saints to play elsewhere.

I often wonder what happened to Robin, the thrasher of shins with ugly studs, the butter of foreheads with creased brow, the bully threatening a beating if he was fouled himself and the angry fellow bellowing evil at anyone who simply entered his line of vision.

Holder is a surname which means a landowner or a herder, a keeper or tender of animals but Robin often behaved more like a caged wild beast…

He WAS my hero though…

GETTING DOWN ON IT WITH STEVE PERRY...

STEVE PERRY, BEV MORRIS & ME WITH 'ROBIN' AT BIRMINGHAM AIRPORT...

MY MERE GREEN DAYS...

...AND THEN AS A SAINT...