This is an extract from an article I wrote for Nutmeg Magazine in 2019 when Bury Football Club were about to go bust. I thought I’d post this section after reading about Morecambe FC, realising that nothing ever changes.
The faint, almost imperceptible turn away from the camera gave it away. The way he knew crying was not allowed, especially not in public. The way she reached out to put her arm around her husband’s shoulder and pulled him towards her, as the camera panned in, gave it away. And the two young lads who couldn’t take their eyes off the stadium as the interviewer tried to draw their attention back gave it away. For all of them, this place had been their life. What would they do now? Where would they go?
It is a nightmare which haunts us all. A scenario many of us have played out in our thoughts, skirted to closely on occasion, and, often, had to contemplate as a real possibility. That Bury Football Club were allowed to fail was a tragedy for their fans. That it could have been so easily avoided makes it worse. The pocket money of both Manchester clubs – so close by yet so far away – could have saved Bury from extinction. That it never even occurred to them to do so sums up the sad state of football. And there but for the grace of our Gods go our clubs.
Bolton, almost gone. Bolton. Not that long since Sam Allardyce and Nikolas Anelka and Youri Djorkoff. Closer to home the reality gets more worrying: rumours abound about clubs close to edge but ask Hearts fans what that feels like. Or Dundee. Or Dunfermline. Or countless others. The reason that, as supporters, we empathised so deeply with the Bury fans, lost and looking for answers, is that we become so emotionally invested in our clubs that the cliché ‘it’s only a game’ is not only trite it is hurtful.
As a Partick Thistle fan I’ve often thought about – often had to think about – the possibility that my club may not be here anymore. I wrote extensively about the Save the Jags campaign in Nutmeg 7: the feelings of betrayal, the hurt, the sickening fear. Those two young lads standing in front of Bury’s stadium hit me hardest. What they were looking at with wonder was a stadium they had only just been getting to know. What they may miss out on is a lifetime’s relationship with their local club; a lifetime of pain and sorrow, shared success and failure, mostly failure; shared experiences with family, friends, strangers. But, perhaps, what they’ll miss out on most is the ability that we have to look back on something, knowing that we’ve lived through it.