Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The team who have hit Peak condition at perfect time
CUP-CRAZY GIANT KILLERS BUXTON
BUXTON is a spa town best known for its opera house – and it might be worth a tenor on an FA Cup upset today.
The Peak District weather forecast for the Bucks’ second-round tilt at League One strugglers Morecambe, set before the nation live on the BBC, is a bit wintry.
Pack a waterproof, expect showers in all arias – and don’t take anything for granted. After all, this is where, in 1975, snow stopped play in a County Championship game..in June.
And if the Northern Premier League minnows reach the third round for only the second time, and land one of the big guns, boss Steve Cunningham and his players will be on every chat show from Football Focus to Opera Winfrey.
Woe betide the Shrimpers if they flounce into the 4,000-capacity Silverlands like divas without knowing their Rigoletto from their Diego De Girolamo.
One of them is a Giuseppe Verdi opera, the other is the Bucks’ top scorer – a former Italy Under-20 international who was once petitioned personally by legend Arrigo Sacchi, pleading with him to choose the Azzurri ahead of England in a tugof-war for his loyalty.
Buxton, where the most famous export is mineral water, will reach for the spas again after their Cup run briefly descended into a soap before their shock first-round win at York.
On the back of a 20-match unbeaten run, managerial duo Gary Hayward and his assistant Mark Ward were dismissed. Ward had insisted on taking an expensive family holiday, postponed several times by Covid travel restrictions, before he lost his deposit.
But Di Girolamo’s late winner at York turned chairman Dave Hopkins’ birthday into a memorable celebration – and left the chief executive of builders merchant Markovitz walking in a timber wonderland. Hopkins is determined not to daydream about a potential date with a gilded Premier League club, but the script is already written: Morecambe will have to sing for their supper.
He said: “It’s no secret that I’m a Manchester United fan, but I’ve been involved in the football community around Buxton as chair of the local junior league, as a club sponsor, and now in the boardroom.
“It’s a great little club – it says 1877 above the door so a lot of people did a lot of work to sustain a football club in the town before we came in, and this is a chance for the BBC to shine a light on what we’re about.
“When I took over, the place needed a bit of modernisation. There was a sloping grass pitch and the stadium was ‘dark’ 98 percent of the time – in other words, it only came alive on matchdays.
“Now we have installed a 4G pitch, a full-time academy, improved facilities, and we are bringing the community closer to the club. There are no grand designs, no five-year plans. We don’t want to run before we can walk, but Harrogate Town have shown what you can achieve if you work your way up the pyramid, and so have our opponents this weekend.
“Geographically, we are caught in the middle of big clubs either side of the Pennines, but there is perhaps a gap in the market for a club in the Peak District to grow.
“We have friends running clubs on the outskirts of Manchester, but the likes of Stockport, Hyde and Curzon Ashton are competing with some big fish. Here we are a one-club town.
“The board is made up of local people, the town has welcomed what we have done so far, and I think we can look upwards, with some degree of ambition.
“The FA Cup will shine a light on the club – we are ready for the BBC’S battalion of outside broadcast trucks and hopefully we will give them attractive football.”
There are no grand designs – we don’t want to run before we can walk