The reassuring hand of football can touch every corner of a community

Darren Bernstein is a Director of Bury AFC at the launch of Fair Game’s Sustainability Index, he shared his own personal story. Here it is in full…

WHEN we reflect on sustainability and the importance of a football club to its community - much has been said about the plight of Bury FC. The irony of the situation being that Bury has received more coverage in its demise than it ever did in its existence.

I would like to use this platform to offer an alternative, personal account of what it is like to lose your club and why a club is so important to its community.

It is easy to talk about ‘community’ in a generic – non-specific way. Doing this doesn’t always mean we get into the key issues about how it affects people within those communities and why the institution of the football club is so important, and the heritage of a club, goes hand in hand with fans and the wider community.

Gigg Lane, the home of Bury FC, sits just outside the town centre. The Stadium has been there since 1885. It’s the 11th oldest football stadium in the world, only three other stadia have hosted more Football League matches. It predates the rows and rows of terraced houses that surround it. In the social consciousness of the town it is as prevalent on the topography of the town as the parish church and the river Irwell.

In any Community, its culture is defined by its places, its songs, its rituals and its stories of heroes and tragedies and as such, is there any greater and more evident arena that this is played out in, than a town or city’s football club. Football clubs, in an age where traditional senses of community are being lost to a more digital, remote sense of what community is, maintain social connections and that sense of place and belonging. They continually create and refresh these stories and ensure that there’s new shared memories for the town, the club, the supporters and the wider community.

When it stops, more than just 90 minutes of football is lost.

If I can, please let me explain, from a very personal example, that I believe, truly demonstrates, what a community loses, when it loses its football club.

Towards the end of last year, unfortunately my father passed away.

A supporter of Bury for over 60 years who took me to my first game in 1983. We went everywhere watching The Shakers and our relationship was forged on predicted scores, team selections and pouring over league tables. Hours in cars on motorways full of excitement and optimism on the way there, full of disappointment and general underwhelming feeling on the way back. But most importantly, forging unbreakable bonds, and, that phrase again, shared memories.

This story is not unique to me, or to Bury fans but a story played out across the nation, where grans and grandads, mums and dads, pass on, as a rite of passage of their allegiance to their chosen club, to the next generation.

 My Dad’s deteriorating health coincided with The Shakers implosion and on that fateful day in August 2019. It stopped. Just like that. No more trips. No more long chats. No more new memories. It stopped. There was a void. We still spoke... about what I’m not sure. We spoke, but I’m not sure we actually talked. Not like we did on the way to a game. It wasn’t the football, the actual game of football, but going to the game, so much more is wrapped up in this activity. It was a safe space to talk, where a million small interactions, make you the person you are.

August 27th 2019 it stopped.

 As talk of a phoenix club grew, I decided that I wanted to be a part of getting the club up and running. And following a first season hampered by Covid, the start of this season coincided with my dad’s last few weeks.

As his condition took hold. The old dad was back. The words ‘Any AFC news?’ means more than who’ve we signed, who are we playing. It was the gateway to a safer place.

As we reached his final days, we watched the online stream of an AFC game together. Sitting next to him, comforting him through the unspoken, but known inevitable. This would be the last game we watched together, holding his hand, reassuringly, just as he held my hand for the same reason, at that very first game at Gigg Lane; things had come full circle.

 I’m forever grateful that AFC gave me a second chance to create a lasting memory, I otherwise wouldn’t have got.

This is my story, but I’m not a special case. There will be Derby fans out there at the moment, petrified at the thought that they will not get to share the experience of taking a child or grandchild to their first game….. and it is these collective experiences across a community, or lack of them when they go, that make football clubs so intertwined with the lives of families in those areas, and vital to the civic pride of the communities those clubs reside in.

Thank you so much for hearing my story. We need to keep the momentum to ensure that the game is governed correctly to avoid any repeat of what happened with my Club.

Darren Bernstein is a lecturer in Football Business at the University Campus of Football Business Etihad Campus and a Director of Bury AFC.