Final whistle
Legacy of Bury’s expulsion should be that football’s authorities only allow right people to take charge, writes Jim White
Owners must be custodians of clubs, not vandals
or Gareth Southgate, Gigg Lane has always had a particular place in his football story. The first game he ever saw live involved Bury, playing a league fixture against Watford in 1975.
“Derek Spence scored the winner with a header,” Southgate recalled when he revealed his squad for England’s forthcoming games against Bulgaria and Kosovo. “I was very young, five, and I don’t think I watched much as I was running up and down the terraces – with probably my dad clipping me round the ear to sit and watch.”
Southgate’s parents moved south to Crawley soon afterwards. So he never again went to watch the club in action; he never again saw Spence, the Northern Ireland international who later ran a Bury off licence, in his pomp; he did not become a fan of the club. But it was a telling endorsement of the glories of the English football pyramid that the future national team manager should start his engagement with the game at a place such as Bury.
And he admitted to being concerned about the implications of the club’s enforced demise last week.
“It worries me and I think it could be something we see a bit more frequently,” he said. “What is clear to me is that, in a 92-team pyramid and professional teams at non-league level as well, there are so many clubs in deficit and in debt. That can’t be sustainable, so that has to be addressed.”
Southgate is right. This is the fundamental question facing the English game: how can we maintain such a range and depth of clubs in an era when the money, attention and social media focus is forever being sucked upwards?
How can we ensure that there are neighbourhood clubs such as Bury around to provide a first taste of the live experience to today’s five-year-olds who might be destined to become England manager in 44 years’ time? This is why losing Bury is not an issue restricted to the 3,000 regulars. It is a matter of concern for everyone who values the future of the game.
The issues are all too apparent. On the very day I had stood outside Bury’s ground hearing the woeful news of eviction from the English Football League, I had seen near Gigg Lane a boy of similar age to Southgate when he first visited the place wearing a Real Madrid shirt.
With the new generation of football fans gaining their first experiences via the digital world of computer games and viral video clips, what place is there for the homely tradition of a dad taking his children to a game at the local lower-league club?
Anyone who believes the globalised economic forces football faces make it impossible for smaller professional operations to exist, however, need only train their eye a few miles down the road from Bury.
In places such as Rochdale and Accrington are clubs facing the same exacting financial circumstances. Kids there are no less likely to be enthused by the glories of Ronaldo in their Fifa. Yet these are clubs still thriving, still alive, still providing the same live experience that first drew Southgate into the game. And how do they do it? There is only one answer: through enlightened ownership.
Bury suffered the misfortune of being struck in succession by the two worst types of club chairman. But Rochdale, Accrington and dozens of other clubs across the country are run by people who recognise what they have is a community resource, not a way to make a buck, owners who act as custodians rather than vandals.
This is how we can sustain the pyramid: ensure clubs are run only by those who understand the vital function such organisations play in the social fabric and whose sole interest is to keep them alive.
The good news is, despite the inevitable gloom generated by Bury’s expulsion, the fit and proper people are out there.
It is now the absolute priority of those in control of football’s processes to put into practice a system strong enough to ensure only such people are allowed anywhere near a boardroom. It is not rocket science.
With new fans gaining first experiences via the digital world, what place is there for local clubs?