John Stones’ home town Penistone buzzing as famous son on cusp of Euro 2020 glory

Not everyone in the South Yorkshire market town of Penistone has been enthralled by England’s charge to the semi-finals of Euro 2020.

“Bloody football,” says one pensioner collecting a lunch time fish and chips. “Keeps interfering with my soaps.”

Corrie and Emmerdale rescheduling aside, this small community of just 12,000 people has more reason to anticipate tonight’s game against Denmark than most.

For it is here that John Stones – England’s 27-year-old defensive lynchpin – is from. It is here that he went to school, where he played for his first club and where he still – even now he is one of Man City’s megastars – comes back for regular visits.

How does it feel for the town to have such a son on the cusp of starring in England’s first major final since 1966?

“Aye, pretty bloody good when you put it like that,” says David Ward, owner of the aforementioned chippie, Wards Fish and Chips. “This is a lovely town but there’s not too much happens here so something like this gets the whole place buzzing. It’s been a horrible year and this gives everyone a bit of hope.”

Stones, to some extent, is something of a rarity in the current England side. This is a team of big city boys. They were born in London and Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham.

Penistone, by contrast – ostensibly part of Barnsley but eight miles from the town and surrounded by farmland – is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone; and often enough, they knew your granddad too. It is neither especially affluent nor suffers overly with deprivation. Some 14.7 per ecent of children in the Penistone West council ward are classed as in poverty here but education, health and employment rates across the town are all higher than the national average.

Ward’s eldest daughter, by way of illustrating the place’s parochial nature, was in the year below Stones at Penistone Grammar School.

“She has a real soft spot for him,” says wife Nicola. “She thinks he’s lovely.”

Lovely how? “Well, put it this way, she wouldn’t kick him out of the…” – a pause – “out of the England side.”

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Time and again here, Stones’ general loveliness is mentioned.

People are delighted that they still see him around every now and then; that he still comes back to see his old coaches at Penistone Church FC where he first played football (before signing professionally for Barnsley ) or he’ll still have a drink in the town. He has not, it seems, let a little thing like being nicknamed the Barnsley Beckenbauer go to his head.

“I’ll tell you the kind of young man he is,” says Paul Crook, principal at the grammar school and a PE teacher who used to occasionally take the young Stones. “The last World Cup, the day after he landed back from Russia, he came back here. He sent Andy Gibbins [one of his old PE teachers] a text message, saying: ‘Andy I’m in the area, what are the chances of bobbing in to school?’ He’d just been a World Cup semi-finalist and that was one of his first thoughts. He came in, signed autographs, had a catch up with staff. The way that can then inspire other students – it’s invaluable.”

As a young student, Stones - who grew up in the Thurlstone area - was already an astonishingly talented footballer. How old was he when he started to surpass his sports teachers?

“He was already better than us when he arrived at 11,” says Crook. “His reading of the game and his understanding were just beyond anything we’d ever seen.”

Yet it was his attitude – his aptitude for hard work on both the pitch and the classroom – that truly set him apart.

“We get students here every year who are talented,” he says. “They will sign for Barnsley or Sheffield United or Wednesday. But they don’t make it because they don’t have the attitude. They think they have already made it. But John knew he had to work at it. Which is exactly what he did. There was no cockiness or arrogance at all.”

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There still isn’t, according to Will Rodgers, who runs four different pubs and bars, including The New Inn and The Vault, here.

The 29-year-old knows the England defender though mutual friends and has spent several nights out with him. “He’s probably the most famous person ever to come from Penistone but when you meet him, he’s just a reggy lad from a reggy family,” he says. “He’s the same now as when I first met him back when [he was playing for Barnsley]. I’m not sure everyone would be like that after his success.”

Now, the whole town his hoping that domestic success with Man City can be followed by international success with England.

“This is a football-mad town,” says Rodgers. “On a Saturday afternoon in the season, the pubs are packed out with people having a drink while they watch the results come in. So, even without Stones, when England play there is real excitement here. But with him playing, it just adds an extra dimension. It’s someone who you’ve literally grown up with and he’s there, on the sreen, in the England shirt. It means more. Every time he came on screen the other night, there was a buzz around the place.”

Indeed, even none football fans have been caught up in the excitement, it seems.

“I’m not really interested in sport,” says Jill Quinn, the 59-year-old owner of the town’s ArtHouse Café when first asked about the tournament.

Well fair enough. But what about Stones?

“Ohhh,” she says. “Everyone’s talking about him. Will we win it? Imagine that – a [European Championship] winner coming from lovely little Penistone.”