When the warning signs are ignored: the fall of Bury, the heartache of a community
Bury fan, James Bentley, relives the pain felt on the day his club died, and explains why it should never happen again
THE 27th of August was an important date for me as a Bury fan. It was on that date that I went to my first-ever game, against Wolverhampton Wanderers on the first day of the 1988/89 season. Wolves had been promoted from Division Four the previous season and their fans had caused carnage on the first day of that campaign at Scarborough.
Fearing a repeat of the same, Greater Manchester Police ordered Bury to kick-off at 11am. They did, and Jamie Hoyland scored the first goal of the 1988/89 season anywhere in the country as he set Bury on the road to a 3-1 win. Saint and Greavsie referred to the game on that afternoon’s edition of their lunchtime programme. It’s on YouTube.
Exactly 31 years to the day later, Bury were expelled from the Football League. When the news broke at 11.05pm on that summer night in 2019, it felt like the strongest punch to the gut I personally would ever experience. With it, the chain holding an anchor in the life of all fans was cut. Routines which acted as a lifeline for the wellbeing of so many, no matter what the result on the pitch, were lost in a wave of a pen.
This ultimate punishment came from two sources: First, after former chairman Stewart Day ran up colossal debts which went unpaid as he chased his personal dream of Championship football with marquee signings on wages that Bury simply couldn’t afford. Second, after his successor Steve Dale – a man with a proven track record of taking over companies, taking what he could from them and then leaving them to rot - refused to do a thing about paying the very same debts.
Whether the business he took over was a sawmill that employed 20 people or a 134-year-old, twice-FA Cup-winning football club woven into the DNA of thousands and thousands of fanatics for whom their support was the defining characteristic of their lives, Dale simply didn’t care. This was how he made his living and mere sentiment wasn’t going to get in the way of that.
Red flags about Day’s spending, which then led Dale to the club, weren’t so much being raised as waved frantically as he began to make his mark, but nothing was done. When he could be bothered holding an AGM, legitimate concerns from petrified supporters were casually and arrogantly batted away. When scrutiny into the danger he was dragging the club into was desperately needed, there was none.
We can talk all day about the heritage of Bury Football Club and what – and who – it gave to the English game over those 134 years. But the expulsion of any club from the Football League would be a tragedy, even if they hadn’t won the cup by a record margin or been the club that had given Colin Bell, Alec Lindsay, Terry McDermott, Neville Southall and so many more their start in the professional game.
Any club’s fans being marooned without the focal point of their lives is devastating. We speak from experience that warnings can’t be ignored, that non-action isn’t an option and that no fans – the most important people at any club – should ever find themselves in the position that Bury fans found themselves on 27 August 2019.