Steve Cherry

Steve Reginald Cherry (born 5 August 1960) is an English former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He made over 690 league and cup appearances in a 20-year career in the Football League and Conference, playing in the top five divisions of the English game.

Cherry was spotted playing for Calverton Youth Wing by Derby County and joined the club on a two-year apprenticeship in 1976, becoming professional two years later. He won three caps for the England Youth Team in 1978. He started his first competitive senior game in February 1980 and played eight games on loan at Port Vale during the 1980–81 season. He established himself in the first team at Derby during the 1982–83 season and was voted the club's Player of the Year in May 1983. The club were relegated out of the Second Division at the end of the 1983–84 season. He was transferred to Walsall in August 1984. He was voted as Walsall's Player of the Season at the end of the 1984–85 campaign but lost his first-team place at the end of the following campaign and was sold to Plymouth Argyle for a £19,000 fee in November 1986. After a poor start to his Plymouth career, he improved and was named the club's Player of the Year in 1988. He then asked for a transfer and joined Chesterfield on loan during the 1988–89 season before being sold to Notts County for a £70,000 fee in February 1989.

Cherry was Neil Warnock's first signing as Notts County manager, and the club found instant success under Warnock's stewardship, winning promotions from the Third Division to the First Division via the play-offs in 1990 and 1991. Though County were relegated back to the second tier, he was named the club's Player of the Year in 1992. He played in two Anglo-Italian Cup finals, as County finished as runners-up in 1994 and champions in 1995. He moved on to Watford in July 1995 before rejoining Plymouth Argyle on loan in February 1996. He helped Plymouth to win the Third Division play-offs in 1996, his third such success with Neil Warnock and fifth appearance at Wembley. He then saw out his career with brief stays at Rotherham United, Kettering Town, Rushden & Diamonds, Rothwell Corinthians, Gainsborough Trinity, Stalybridge Celtic, Mansfield Town, Oldham Athletic, Lincoln City, Kidsgrove Athletic and Belper Town. He won the Staffordshire Senior Cup with Kidsgrove in 2004. He later coached at Notts County and Macclesfield Town.

Early life Steve Reginald Cherry was born at Nottingham General Hospital on 5 August 1960 and grew up in Calverton, Nottinghamshire. He was born into a mining family: his parents were Harold and Lonorah Cherry, a colliery electrician and housewife respectively. He had the opportunity to follow his father into the mines should his fledging football career not work out. Having impressed during the trial he was placed in the club's youth team on wages of £12.50-a-week and in 1976 he signed a two-year apprenticeship contract. He was given his first professional contract in 1978, still with six months left to run of his apprenticeship contract. He was dropped in favour of John Lukic after a 2–1 defeat to Italy. Manager John McGrath had sold regular custodian Trevor Dance, and was forced to enter the loan market after Mark Harrison was struck down with injury. He admitted his performance that day was "embarrassing".

The 1982–83 season also started badly, and Cherry replaced Banovic in goal in October. Writing in his autobiography, Cherry cited the defeat to United as his career-best performance as he made difficult saves to deny Frank Stapleton, Norman Whiteside and Steve Coppell, and was only beaten late on by Whiteside for the game's only goal. Cherry was voted the club's Player of the Year in May 1983. The team continued to lose games and concede goals, leaving Cherry to bemoan poor defending that frequently left him exposed. However, he conceded directly from a corner kick in the replay and felt "lower than the village idiot", whilst goalscorer Andy Rogers admitted the goal was "an absolute fluke". He replaced Ron Green as the "Saddlers" number one and enjoyed a good start to the 1984–85 Third Division campaign. Walsall played former club Derby four times during the season as they drew them in the first round of the Associate Members' Cup and Cherry was subjected to taunting from Derby fans throughout the games, which he admitted "was an occupational hazard, but it still gets to you". Buckley was sacked, much to Cherry's surprise, and new manager Tommy Coakley brought in goalkeeper Mark Prudhoe to be the club's new number one. It was the start of a poor run of form for the "Pilgrims" and Cherry became unpopular with supporters at Home Park.

Cherry felt that long travel times from Devon to his Midlands home were not helping his form, so he moved to Plymouth in the summer of 1987. He started on wages of £425-a-week and took home a signing-on fee of £6,666. Cherry later compared joining his hometown club as like "winning the lottery" and "my family has supported Notts for more than a 100 years". He immediately replaced Mick Leonard in goal as Warnock built his own team.

County adapted well to the Second Division, winning their first four games of the 1990–91 season and running nine games unbeaten in December. In the final a brace from Tommy Johnson and a goal from Dave Regis won the game for County, despite a late consolation goal from Dean Wilkins, winning a promotion for the club and a £12,000 win bonus for each of the players. On 10 March, he gave away a penalty, which he subsequently saved to earn another man of the match award, though the 0–0 home draw with Aston Villa left County in the relegation zone.

Cherry was unhappy with his wage reduction and became unsettled early in the 1992–93 season, whilst key first-team players such as Tommy Johnson, Paul Rideout and Dave Regis were sold off to fund a £3.4 million redevelopment of Meadow Lane. Cherry was dropped in favour of Bob Catlin for the season opener at Birmingham City, though was returned to the starting line-up the following week. County fared much better in the Anglo-Italian Cup, reaching the Wembley final against Brescia after beating Southend United on penalties in the semi-final. The league campaign ended with a 2–0 loss at Oxford United that saw County narrowly miss out on the play-offs with a seventh-place finish. Cherry put in extra work in training to lose 11 pounds in weight and was rewarded with a place in the Anglo-Italian Cup final game with Ascoli at Wembley on 19 March. However, County won just one of their remaining ten league games and were relegated in last place at the end of the 1994–95 season, whilst Cherry was released. He had received offers from Norwegian club Tromsø and a club in Hong Kong but decided to remain in England. He played 19 games for the club and kept a clean sheet for Plymouth in the Third Division play-off final at Wembley, as his team won promotion with a 1–0 victory over Darlington.

Cherry then moved on to Rotherham United, after being offered a two-year contract on £400-a-week (with a £20,000 signing-on fee) at Millmoor by management duo Archie Gemmill and John McGovern.

Cherry featured eight times at the start of the 1997–98 season before being dropped by manager Brian Talbot. Talbot released him from his contract at Nene Park in September 1997 and set him up for a part-time arrangement at Rothwell Corinthians in the United Counties League Division One. He played the opening game of the Third Division 1998–99 season for Mansfield Town on 9 August 1998, a 3–0 defeat at Brentford, as regular custodian Ian Bowling was unavailable and Steve Parkin needed a goalkeeper for the one match. He spent the 2003–04 season playing for Kidsgrove Athletic in the Northern Premier League Division One and helped the club to win their first Staffordshire Senior Cup with victory over Stafford Rangers in the final. He joined Kidsgrove as cover for the injured Phil McGing and his son also joined the club at the same time. Kidsgrove reported that they were the first club in the country to have father and son goalkeepers in the squad at the same time.

Personal and later life He married Julie, a secretary, on 22 December 1979. His son, Jon (born 1985), played semi-professional football for Arnold Town and Kidsgrove Athletic after being released from Notts County as a teenager. The book was written by Jonathan Nicholas, who in his former career had patrolled around the Meadow Lane pitch as a policeman when Cherry played as a goalkeeper at Notts County.

Career statistics + Appearances and goals by club, season and competition runner-up: 1993–94 Walsall Player of the Season: 1984–85 Notts County Player of the Year: 1992