Matlock Town

Nicky Law took charge at Matlock Town in 2024, arriving with an Arsenal and Barnsley playing career behind him and a club in Derbyshire that had spent a century and a half doing most of its business several divisions below where he had made his name. The 2024-25 season tested him early: relegation to the Northern Premier League Division One East, a fourth-from-bottom finish. The following campaign, the club came from the dead in the table to finish runners-up, before losing in the promotion play-off semi-finals to Bradford (Park Avenue).

Matt Derbyshire's return told its own story about what the club can still pull off. A striker with a Football League career behind him, he came out of retirement in 2024 to sign at Causeway Lane, now known as the Proctor Cars Stadium, where the pitch sits alongside a local cricket ground with the cricket square behind one goal.

None of it matches 1975. That year Matlock Town beat Scarborough 4-0 at Wembley to win the FA Trophy, a final remembered locally for three brothers sharing the same starting eleven, a coincidence no one has since repeated at that level. Two seasons later the club went to Field Mill and put out Mansfield Town, then Third Division champions, 5-2, before Carlisle United ended the run in the next stage.

Buxton have been the standing appointment ever since anyone can remember, the fixture known locally as the Battle of the Dales, sharpened further by a pre-season meeting for the Markovitz Cup. Founded in 1878, Matlock Town remain one of the oldest clubs in Derbyshire, and the Derbyshire Senior Cup has come back to Causeway Lane ten times.