Today I'm going back 42 years to 1979 and York City's FA Cup 2nd Round visit to Gigg Lane, Bury played in front of a crowd of 4,195.
You may want to take a look at my article on Bury contained in my blog on City's Play-Off Semi-Final programme against Bury made earlier this year. At the time I said that I felt rather sorry for Bury. The original Bury FC club fell foul of a profligate owner who overspent dramatically chasing promotion from League Two to League One in 2018/19. Although Bury achieved that much desired promotion, their financial position was simply unsustainable. They crashed spectacularly shortly afterwards and were expelled from the Football League. That crash prompted their fans to form a new club which is called Bury AFC (as opposed to Bury FC) and now play at the tenth tier of the English football pyramid in the North West Counties League Division 1 North. AFC currently groundshare at the home of Radcliffe FC and their splendid old Gigg Lane home lies fallow.
The original Bury FC technically continues to exist although the club is dormant and doesn't presently play at any level. However the club continues to exist and, for some fans, this presents a problem in that they don't feel that they can make their full allegiance to Bury AFC in case the original club (which they still support) should come back to life and recommence playing football. I think that most fans would have preferred a clean break rather than this kind of lingering death and I think that it is particularly cruel of the owner of the original club to toy with people's emotions like this. There's an excellent BBC podcast series which explains the demise of FC and rise of AFC which I would recommend if you'd like to know more which can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08q9nr2
This was my first ever visit to Gigg Lane which is presently the subject of a bid aimed at buying both the stadium and the original club. That bid was granted exclusivity in October 2021 in the hope that the deal can be completed before the end of 2021 (there's not long to go mind!).The bid is backed by local MPs, the Borough Council, the fans group at Bury AFC and the obligatory (or so it seems) anonymous benefactor who is understood to be a Californian based Englishman and lifelong Bury fan. Fingers crossed that the deal can go through and the new Bury AFC can draw a line under the turbulence of the last couple of years and focus on climbing the pyramid back to the Football League (as long as they don't hinder York City's progress in the same direction obviously).
One feature of the Gigg Lane locality that I've always rather enjoyed in the nearby public house known as The Swan & Cemetery. That's a fabulous name for a pub isn't it? According to the pub's website, the pub has been there for far longer than the cemetery and was called the Old Swan in the 1800's. I don't normally approve of tinkering with pub names but this one I make an exception for. I do hope that it's full of goths on weekday evenings but I've never noticed any there when I've popped in for a swift one before visiting Gigg Lane on a Saturday.
The featured match was a rather uninspiring goalless draw albeit that there was a lively atmosphere around the place as the citizens of Bury and York got to know and dislike each other. "Bury away" became a pilgrimage for York fans around this time as a bitter rivalry developed. Sadly for York, who had beaten Mossley 5-2 in the previous round (see the programme for that one in my blog), Bury triumphed in the Replay at Bootham Crescent the following Tuesday night. Bury went on to beat Rochdale 3-2 in the 3rd Round and Burnley 1-0 in the 4th Round before finally bowing out to Liverpool Round 5. West Ham United won the FA Cup that season beating Arsenal 1-0 in the Final (yay!).
CRB Match No, 67
Comments
Post a Comment