AFTER a 20-year professional career in some of the best dressing rooms in world football, you could forgive Michael Duberry for turning his nose up at the less than salubrious surroundings of the Ryman Premier League.
The former Chelsea, Leeds United, Reading and Oxford United centre-half jokes the installation of flat screens showing Sky Sports should become mandatory.
But despite his CV containing a League Cup, Cup Winners’ Cup and a European Super Cup there’s nothing big time about the likeable 37-year-old, who has started his first season out of the elite 92 at Gary McCann’s Hendon.
You see while Duberry laughs that Beckham, Scholes, Carragher and Ferguson stealing the retirement headlines means he has to play on another year, he doesn’t want to stop.
Yet Duberry’s phone has barely rung this summer.
“I’m very surprised – I’m fit, I’m healthy and I’ve shown age isn’t a factor,” he says.
“I’m not saying I see myself as this but the more people I speak to in football seem to think, ‘You’re Michael Duberry, you’ve played at the highest level and your natural progression is to go into coaching so managers tend to think, ooh is he coming to get my job? Maybe they don’t want that looking over their shoulder in the changing room’.
Mindset
“It could be that factor, it could just be the fact they think I’m rubbish. But on the general scheme of things I think, why wouldn’t you want an experienced player in your dressing room?
“People have pre-consumed ideas. They think, ‘Oh 37, he can’t run, he’s not as fast as he used to be’. I don’t think anyone is going to be as fast at 37 as they are at 21.
“But I’ll tell you this; I don’t get beaten in a foot race. I’m not slow and I’m sure I can be as fast as most of the centre-halves in the league even at my age.
“There might be a little swelling around the midriff, but I keep myself fit. Gary asked me to come and play for him and said, ‘Dubes, if someone comes in for you we won’t stand in your way’.
“Hendon have given me the opportunity to be in a football club environment and I enjoy it.”
That started with a 4-0 win in front of 81 people against Thamesmead on the opening day before a 2-1 defeat to league new boys Dulwich Hamlet on Monday.
Duberry points out he hasn’t dropped straight from the top into Non-League. There have been stops at League One with Wycombe, the SPL with St Johnstone and most recently League Two with Chris Wilder’s U’s.
But what is Non-League like for someone who played with Ruud Gullit, Gianfranco Zola and Gianluca Vialli at Chelsea and against Real Madrid’s Raul and Rivaldo, as he did when Leeds United famously beat AC Milan in the Champions League?
“All it means is I’ve got a better CV or history. My thing is to maintain the gap and the distance,” Duberry says. “So when centre-forwards run at me I keep my good habits as if I’m defending against a Ronaldo or a Thierry Henry. If I do that then more often than not I’ll win the ball.
“That’s in my head. My mind-set is, I might be playing against Thamesmead, but I’m not having the Thamesmead centre-forward down his local pub saying, ‘I ripped Michael Duberry on Saturday’.
Incentive
“The only thing I want him to say is, ‘Bloody hell I played against Michael Duberry man. You can see why he’s played at the top level and what a good defender he is at 37′.
“It’s an incentive. An incentive to keep doing the right things on a Friday night, prepare the same way as if I was playing against an Arsenal or a Man United.”
While Duberry isn’t ready to hang up his boots yet, he’s getting ready to move into the next phase of life.
Coaching, he says, is not for him with his family the main focus in life. He’s interested in media work and he’s launching a clothing line, Positive Vibez, as a side interest.
But he hasn’t lost that innate desire to win something else before he does call time.
“Not everyone comes out of football being a winner,” he says. “Whatever it is, to win something is an achievement.
“The last time I won something I was 22 – the European Super Cup with Chelsea against Real Madrid. You’re young and you think to yourself, ‘This is brilliant; this is going to happen every year’.
Legend
“I remember being in the semi-final of the Cup Winners Cup with Chelsea at Vicenza in Italy. Me, Andy Myers and Jody Morris – the young Chelsea boys at the time – were out on the pitch for our pre-game walk.
“There was Mark Hughes taking pictures. We were laughing at him, ‘What you doing Sparky? Put the camera away’.
“He said to us, ‘No, you’ve got to savour these moments’. And that’s from a legend like Sparky! That’s why he’s one of my favourite players I ever played with.”
Duberry now looks back on those days with fondness and is proud of all he has achieved without ever being flashy about it.
But there is one demand he has, even in the down-to-earth Non-League world.
“A long sleeve shirt,” he says. “I don’t mind queuing for cold, drippy showers. The only thing I’ve said to the gaffer is I’ve got to wear a long sleeve shirt. If I’m being a diva, then I’m sorry, but that’s my thing.”
