‘TOWN HAS FALLEN IN LOVE WITH US AGAIN’
SCARBOROUGH Athletic Chairman Trevor Bull says Monday’s playoff final victory over Warrington Town “felt like the day our town fell back in love with its football club”.
Victory saw the Seadogs clinch a poignant promotion from the Northern Premier League, to lift the Phoenix club to the same level their predecessors Scarborough FC were at when liquidated in 2007.
“It hasn’t sunk in, the experience has been absolutely unbelievable,” Bull told The NLP.
“Over 7,000 people applied for tickets for the final and the game was being shown in all the pubs. It was like how things had been with the old Scarborough FC.
“We started this project with no footballs, no ground, just a group of fans who wanted to bring the joy of the game back to the town of Scarborough.”
Although the season ended in unbridled joy, the campaign was a rollercoaster for the club’s faithful, with a bleak mid-winter meltdown threatening to produce a different trajectory.
After the appointment of rookie boss Jonathan Greening over the summer, Scarborough began the season stuttering, quickly losing ground on promotion rivals.
Bull admits to enduring several dark days on the terraces but insists he was never tempted to press the panic button.
By Hugo Varley
He said: “I remember when we lost 5-1 at Buxton at the start of December. I was with Fred Firman, the vice-chairman and we walked over to our away fans. There were only nine or ten fans there that day, it was the lowest following in years. But we kept faith in Jonathan’s vision and only lost three more games from then on.
“As a club we’ve tried to push a motto of ‘Our Boro, Our Town and Our Club’ to unite everyone together and Jonathan, as someone who grew up in the area, is the perfect fit.”
Bull has overseen an action-packed few years since taking over as chairman in 2017, which has included two promotions, moving to a new stadium and traversing two years of Covid chaos.
The businessman took over after the death of David Holland and Bull says emotions ran high on Monday.
“Both David and another former chairman who sadly passed away, Richard Adamson, put so much work into the club,” he added.
“We took some time to think of them and remember their efforts after the victory.
“It’s been an amazing journey with so many moments to treasure along the way and this chapter has ended in a really special way.”