Dead and Bury-ed

Our communities are a huge part of the ethos of sustainability. The ones we live in, work in, play in - they are all important. They give us a sense of belonging, of identity, of family - a thing that can bind people of myriad backgrounds, races, religions together with a communal sense of pride. Even when they don't function quite right, they offer a great deal of value to us all.

Communities get involved and do things together; I was on my local village Carnival committee for 5 or 6 years, helping to fundraise, organise and run a major local event, that despite being very hard work, for one day each year brings everyone from several miles distant together to have a bit of fun. 

And this all brings me towards my thoughts tonight.

Football has always been a huge part of my life. To watch your local football team is to be a part of a slightly different kind of community - spending hours watching the highs and lows (many lows for me) of your team with like-minded people; revelling in the joy of that last minute winner, the despair of losing to your fiercest rivals, and the sheer jubilation of winning a cup or a league! 

But football clubs in the UK (and probably the world over) are much more than that. They are also generally a part of the wider community they sit in. Clubs make great efforts to get involved with those communities, to ensure that they are an integral part of them - apart from anything else, it makes sound business sense. Be nice to your neighbours and maybe one day they will come back and give you some support.

My local team - Aldershot - were early evidence that sustainable business is just as important in football as it should be in any other line of work, although it is often hidden, as people will like to remark that football 'isn't like normal business' so different rules somehow apply. In 1992, after years of mis-management and bad business decisions, that notion went out of the window as they went out of business mid-season - the first team to do that in 30 years (after Accrington Stanley in 1962). The pain was unbearable, despite the inevitability of it all in those last few desperate weeks. I was away at college at the time. Football is a big community, and I got a lot of sympathy from all my football loving mates - they know what supporting your team is about - and they knew how they would feel if it happened to their team.

Vicky Rogers, current programme editor for Aldershot Town, said in an article in Metro today (https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/28/we-rebuilt-our-football-club-heres-what-bury-fc-must-do-10644937/),

"If you can [empathise with Bury fans], it means that you too have stared down the barrel of empty Saturdays, with nothing to define yourself as, and felt the numbness that accompanies losing not only your football club, but all of the friends, experiences and emotions that accompany supporting a lower league team."

Aldershot bounced back (as Aldershot Town), and have spent the last 27 years moving up and down the semi-pro and pro football leagues - and just like before, there have been some truly great highs, and some simply awful ones where we thought the worst might happen again. 

And now it has happened to Bury. One of the oldest clubs in the football league, playing in the second tier of English football as recently as twenty years ago, and two times winners of the FA Cup. Gone. Hundreds of heartbroken fans have had their football community ripped away from them - and the wider of community of Bury, a proud Lancashire mill town, has had its football club ripped from its heart.

I don't want to get too much into the politics of it all; extremely poor ownership and management, lack of oversight from the league, ambivalence from the FA - all seem to have played parts to varying degrees. Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons for it - the tragedy lies with those who lost their jobs, and those who lost that part of their identity that is entwined with the club, and the community who lost a key local asset that put them on the map (although many won't admit it - in every town in this country, even those who don't actively support their local team, will always keep an eye open for their results each week).

There is hope though, as Rogers remembers, "Because in the end, it was the unity that set Aldershot Town back onto the road to recovery, the working together of supporters, led by two determined men who had the very best for the Shots and its supporters at the heart of everything they did."

Hopefully they will bounce back, and hopefully they will eventually regain their status. But communities are important, even football ones - and this is a stark reminder that even in the emotive world of football, sustainability is essential for survival. In this world of high-profile, big money Premier League teams, it is easy to forget this as clubs strive to reach for the next level up and sometimes throw huge quantities of cash in pursuit of that dream. But for every Bury there is a Bolton sitting on the brink (though hopefully they have been saved) and a dozen or more other ones teetering close to the brink...

This is an excellent and thought-provoking article by the BBC's Tom Fordyce on the subject.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49493499