It’s the biggest moment in Bury history since the lights went out

Four years after the club died, they are still not home…but getting closer

There was a time, when Stewart Day lost all grasp of what he owned in a whirlwind of gambling chaos, that the then Bury owner raised the prospect of a new 24,000-seat stadium.

he had held discussions with the council, ignoring the fact that average gates had not exceeded 5,000 this millennium.

But Day, heavily into property and development, believed his Manchester satellite was ready to take off. Clearly, the eyes were bigger than the belly. And, as it happens, the wallet.

had those ideas got off the ground, Bury might have been leaving Gigg Lane, opened in 1885 and — to those of us with misty eyes and wistfulness for tradition — an english football institution.

Now, with senior men’s football locked out for four years after the club’s expulsion from the eFL, there is a fight on to get back inside. Bury’s story, a case study in the Government’s White Paper on reforming the game, looks like one for Netflix to pick up.

Since 2019, this has been a tale of toxic division, power struggles and Whitehall intervention. Today there are moves to end all that for the good of the town. reMeMBer Bury? Lovely little club, north of Manchester. Bounced between the bottom two divisions for all but two years of the last five decades and lifted the FA Cup twice before the First World War. An enchanting place, where a young Colin Bell cut his teeth.

The world flocked there for a week in August 2019 when the town’s world fell in. A former director, Joy hart, handcuffed herself to a drainpipe in protest at the ownership. Coffins were symbolically propped up outside. expelled, Bury died and the world then largely forgot.

As a brief recap, their story is this: Day ran them into the ground, paying ludicrous wages of more than £5,000 a week to League Two footballers and the spending never ceased. The debts racked up, creditors unpaid, and Day sold to Steve Dale for £1. rather than save it, Dale oversaw the rotting of the carcass.

Bury went under. The less said about the villains of the piece, Day and Dale, the better. Both went bankrupt and are long gone. A region was left to grieve but was also split on its future. A phoenix club, Bury AFC, was not universally popular when founded in 2020, with some supporters wanting to fight for the old club. The new club’s directors were subjected to death threats.

The phoenix flew a couple of miles south-west, to radcliffe. Modestly, it thrived. Attendances can touch 2,000. Cash at the bank is healthily into the hundreds of thousands, despite a misadventure where proceeds of a charity game were ‘ borrowed’ by one rogue individual.

Manager Andy Welsh, a former Stockport and Sunderland winger, is eyeing consecutive promotions, which would take them to the eighth tier. They have also had a strong run in the FA Vase, reaching the quarter-finals.

But they are still not home and this is where it becomes complicated. Bury AFC are owned by the Shakers Community Society and had an application to lease Gigg Lane rejected. Another faction of the original fanbase, Bury Football Club Supporters’ Society, own the ground. They were pledged a £ 1million Levelling Up grant to buy it 15 months ago. The Government’s press release read: ‘Christmas comes early for Bury fans.’

There were the usual photo ops. Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, grinned away with Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up. For Gove, this community project is exactly what the scheme was designed to aid, and in one of the country’s most marginal seats.

Only nothing has moved since. Sportsmail understands Gove has the power to recover grant money — £700,000 of which has already been drawn down — if the situation remains at an impasse. he met both supporter organisations in January, pointing towards urgency. The custodians have not yet adhered to the grant funding agreement, a condition that the two sides work together to return games to its rightful place.

BFCSS do not have a manager or team to field in a league and have seen an application to join the North West Counties rejected. Gigg Lane hosts the odd external training session and school camp — some locals knock about drinking in the bar too — but Gove’s milestones included the building of a 3G pitch and a gym, neither of which are close to starting. The risk of receivership has been mentioned.

‘Taxpayers’ money should not be thrown around like confetti, particularly in difficult economic times,’ one source said. ‘It has to be done properly and carefully.’

Agitation has festered and heightened after a vote in November to decide whether the two supporter groups merged resulted in a negative outcome, which also saw the council withdraw funding worth £450,000. Perhaps ego has to give way for compromise. What is the ground without a team? What is a phoenix team, clinging on to Bury’s roots, without the ground?

Shakers Community Society members voted in favour of unification with a majority 96 per cent, while BFCSS — with more staunch dissenters — came in at 63 per cent, just under the two thirds required for it to pass.

Some argue there was a lack of transparency about the process. A protest against the merger, marching on to playing fields on a Saturday, forced theh postponement ofo kids’ football.

‘ This is an unprecedented opportunity for football,’ said Andy Walsh, the Football Supporters’ Association’s head of national game and community ownership. ‘ A reckless private owner has crashed the club anda then within a short period there is an opportunity for supporters to launch a rebirth anda secure the historicalh ground.

‘ The Government and local council have shown faith in how football can unite communities. ticommunities. ThThe council is Labour led, the Government Conservative. They are coming together to help revive the club’s fortunes. It’s very frustrating we’ve fallen just short of the amalgamation.’

Fortunately, breakthroughs have been made in recent days. A second vote is imminent. BFCSS are promoting it with more vim and promising to revoke the membership of anybody found making threats. If a merger occurs, Bury AFC will move into Gigg Lane and there is a chance to reclaim the club’s old name.

‘We’re working collaboratively to get something sorted,’ said SCS chairman Phil Young. ‘ The vast majority want to see this merger happen. There will always be a small minority on both sides who don’t. We accept that.

‘For us, if we don’t vote in favour of a merger, we essentially lose the ability to use Gigg Lane in the future. We’re effectively turning that opportunity down.

‘Where BFCSS members are concerned, voting against it puts them in an extremely difficult position with the funding that has been drawn down. They have the same risks — they have the ground now but if they can’t get a vote through, whether that can continue would be in severe doubt.

‘ We’re working towards a common ground. There is a greater understanding of what the risks are this time.’

Gigg Lane is in good nick. The pitch requires some work but the BFCSS volunteers have proudly transformed the stadium from wild vegetation to a place fit to host football. This is a critical moment.