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A leading light in the agricultural sector and a man who has guided generations of Ashburnians on to the right path are the two men chosen to start Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide 2023. NFU group secretary and Shrovetide supporter Paul Cook will be the first man to turn up a ball from the new plinth on Shrove Tuesday, February 21.
And youth worker, sportsman and postman Mick Mee will follow him up the new steps on Ash Wednesday, February 22. Paul has spoken of his shock at being asked to take on the town’s top honour, which will reflect the close relationship he helped to build with the farmers who allow Shrovetide to play on his land.
And Mick has described the deep connection his family has with Shrovetide, including his son Will, who scored for the Down’ards on February 22 in 2009.
Shrove Tuesday – Paul Cook
The man chosen to turn up Shrove Tuesday’s ball has, for more than 30 years, been a mainstay of the area’s farming community, and a champion for the local agricultural sector. But although he has been invited to receive the game’s top honour, NFU group secretary Paul Cook was actually the man who successfully called for the game’s cancellation in 2001 – even vetoing a visit by HRH The Prince of Wales.
That was the year the devastating Foot and Mouth Disease shook the country, a year Paul describes as the worst of his working life, and he had no choice but to beg the Shrovetide committee of the time to call off their plans to host their first royal visitor since 1928. “I don’t know how many people know it was me that stopped it”, he said. “But the landowners were all members of the NFU and they were worried sick about the game being played across their land. So they asked me to stop the game.
“I had to have a meeting with the committee and it was decided, for the good of the game, that it just had to be cancelled that year. And I applaud the committee for making that decision, having put in all of the work to bring Prince Charles. It was such a massive thing to cancel it.”
Ever since that year, thanks to Paul’s intervention, representing all the farmers who owned land along the game’s natural “pitch”, the relationship between the Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide Committee and the farmers who welcome players onto their fields every year has never been stronger.
The proud Welshman, who lives with his wife Barbara and their two dogs in Snelston, concedes he will always be an “outsider”, having moved to Ashbourne to take up his role with the NFU’s local branch in 1989. But he has always been a passionate supporter of Shrovetide and his job has seen him working closely with some of the game’s greatest players.
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Having grown up in the Welsh Valleys Paul’s heart lies on the rugby pitch, and this led to his farming friends urging him to bring his skills as a flanker into the Shrovetide hug, but Paul says he never felt he would fit in as a player. “From minute one, I realised Shrovetide should be for Ashbourne people”, he said. “And we should support the game, but not be involved in playing the game, because it’s not for outsiders. Shrovetide is for Ashbourne people, I believe.
“But the delight I’ve had over the years is that I’ve spoken to some absolute legends of the game, and the stories they’ve regaled to me over the years has been so inspiring.” As a union secretary, father-of-two Paul is the first port of call for the area’s farming community, and he has chalked up a string of successes while lobbying for the industry, including taking the milk quota case to Europe on behalf of Britain. Paul managed to win back a multi-million-pound refund after years of fighting on behalf of the dairy industry.
But while Paul has enjoyed a string of successes in his union post, he has also built up a successful career running the area’s branch of NFU Mutual, an award-winning rural insurer. And although Paul’s King Edward Street-based branch, which he has built up to a £3.8 million success story, has never been able to apply an insurance product to Shrovetide, that hasn’t stopped him from helping the committee in its hour of need.
On more than one occasion Paul has been able to call on his vast network of contacts in the insurance industry to help the committee provide cover for a game which is becoming increasingly difficult to underwrite. Another sport that has always been important to Ashbourne has played a big part in Paul’s life – golf. Paul has been with Ashbourne Golf Club through thick and thin, serving as its secretary, captain, chairman and president twice. He even served on the committee in 1996, at the time the club negotiated buying the picturesque farm that has since become its course and clubhouse off Wyaston Road.
Away from sport, Paul has found time to indulge another interest of his in Ashbourne, singing. During his early life in the Welsh Valleys, Paul would sing at concerts with his school, at Eisteddfods, and he even performed with his Young Farmers’ Club, but once settled in Ashbourne he discovered Ashbourne Singers.
Over the years he became more involved and became chairman, and he later went on to join Chameleon Choir, another local singing group. As an accomplished public speaker – another legacy of his time in the Young Farmers Club – Paul says he is looking forward to giving a speech in front of hundreds of people at the pre-game luncheon, and it is excitement and planning, rather than nerves, that is dominating his thoughts.
“I haven’t been able to sleep”, he said. “Since they told me they wanted me to turn up the ball I’ve had the most monster migraine because I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m so excited.
“I’ve been planning my speech, I’ve been thinking about what will be going on my ball. I haven’t been able to think of anything else. When the committee asked me, I was totally, totally speechless. I just filled up with emotion. I felt proud, humbled and a bit scared.
“I’m so deeply, deeply honoured though. As an outsider, coming to Ashbourne, I’ve worked and lived more than half my life here and devoted it to Ashbourne. But to be recognised as being worthy, as somebody that they would invite has just filled me with pride. I’m totally gobsmacked, absolutely blown away. I couldn’t speak, and that’s really not like me.”
Ash Wednesday – Mick Mee
Turning up Ash Wednesday’s ball is a man with Shrovetide coursing through his veins. With a bloodline that can be traced back to the prolific goal scorer Joe “Ninety” Burton, Mick Mee has always been keen to pass on a Shrovetiding legacy. And now that his name will be etched onto the game’s roll of honour, that legacy is secured.
However, even if he hadn’t been given the town’s top honour in a unanimous committee vote, the 70-year-old Up’ard would have already left an indelible mark on Shrovetide, if not through his four sons – one of whom, Will Mee, scored a goal in 2009, but through the tireless work he has done to support the young people of Ashbourne.
Generations of Ashburnians and, indeed, future Shrovetiders, flourished at the hands of Mick and his wife Anthea, who started volunteering with youngsters in their home village of Mayfield in 1976, nurturing youngsters in the local youth club. Mick said: “It started off because people asked us if we wanted to help out, but once we got involved in it we realised we were doing some good, and we were doing a good job, so it carried on from there.”
Mick’s wife, Anthea, offered a different perspective on why youth work appealed to Mick, however. “He’s never really grown up,” she joked. It was the start of a long career for Mick, who worked with youngsters alongside his busy and varied professional life, starting out as an apprentice mechanic at Kennings Garage, working for six years at JCB, and then settling into a long stint with Royal Mail that saw him through to retirement.
The second volunteering challenge Mick took on was at the Ashbourne Youth Centre, which was in Cokayne Avenue at the time, in a purpose-built building now occupied by the Adult Education Centre. Mick and Anthea had moved to Ashbourne by now, and their family was growing, but Mick wasn’t too busy to take on the role of assistant youth leader, volunteering initially, but eventually becoming a district youth leader, ensuring young people in the surrounding villages were given the best possible start.
And it certainly didn’t stop there. Mick was instrumental in bringing the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme to Ashbourne and he supported the Ashbourne ID youth group in raising a huge amount of money to build their own skate park behind Ashbourne Leisure Centre.
He also brought cycling proficiency lessons to Ashbourne, helping scores of kids learn the essential safety skills they needed to take to two wheels. And it was this love of life on two wheels that had been shaping his life and his career.
A keen motorcyclist and mountain biker, Mick spent 15 years on what he describes as the “best job he’s ever had” repairing and maintaining a massive fleet of Royal Mail bicycles for the whole of Derbyshire, based at the depot on the industrial estate. And many people in Ashbourne will know Mick as their postman, because when the Royal Mail did away with their bicycle fleet, he went on to deliveries, up to his eventual retirement.
But he always found time for youth work. Even putting in a part-time stint as a PE teacher at the former PNEU school at Mayfield Road, indulging another passion, in football. He developed this passion by starting up a youth football team, and he was a familiar face on the pitch himself, refereeing countless children’s and adults’ matches.
Mick has also been a strong supporter of disabled people in the area, launching an independent living group for disabled youngsters, setting up a special needs youth group, and supporting several important charities for disadvantaged youngsters. Even now, Mick is still actively volunteering in the community, and he and Anthea help out at Ashbourne Ventures, a youth group at Elim Church.
One of the highlights of Mick’s charity work was a televised motocross marathon in Stanton for BBC’s Children in Need. He also helped to put on discos and meals for children from Chernobyl, who were brought to Ashbourne each year to enjoy a break from the toxic landscape they lived in following the reactor explosion.
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“I feel like I’m sat here blowing my own trumpet”, Mick admitted to the News Telegraph, as he recounted the various roles he had undertaken. “But at the time it wasn’t like that. We enjoyed doing it, so we just did it.”
“You could write a book on what he’s done,” Anthea added.
But whether they know him as a postman, or whether their lives were enriched by his tireless work nurturing new generations of Ashburnians and Shrovetiders, Ash Wednesday is likely to see a bumper crowd turn up to see Mick’s big day, which will begin at the pre-game luncheon in the leisure centre.
Mick said: “I’m certainly nervous. I’m nervous about giving the speech, but I’m so happy. I couldn’t be happier. And I’m happy for all my family as well.
“I’m going to enjoy it though, it’s an unbelievable feeling, and I’m really looking forward to it, taking it all step by step, but at the moment I’m just finding it all a bit surreal. I can’t believe it’s happening really. I’m going to have a lot of sleepless nights, and it’s all a bit overwhelming, but I’m very excited.”
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