For a very long time I have wanted
to write some sort of fictional football story inspired by my lifetime
supporting a lower league club. Alas, unfortunate circumstances have made me
decide there is no time like the present.
I have looked on in distaste in
recent years as I’ve seen how Sky, money and the Premier League have, in my
honest opinion, destroyed the football pyramid in the English game. This destruction
cannot be more emphasised than in the unfortunate events surrounding my
football club, Bury FC.
I could spend several pages
documenting the lies, stupidity, corruption and mismanagement that has led to
my club's unfortunate situation, but alas, that is not the purpose of this
blog.
I started supporting Bury in 1993
and have continued to travel home and away watching them. My memory is not what
it was, but aided by old Bury videos from the 1990s featuring the biased and
eccentric commentary of our club's commentator, I often watch old highlights
and revisit the world of lower league football when it was, in my opinion, in
the final years of its greatness.
Grounds with wooden seats,
drooping, loose netting hanging from the upright, fans leaning against iron
bars on the terraces and football grounds bearing the name of the street where
it was founded when Queen Vic still sat on the throne, rather than a corporate
sponsor. There was no such thing as twitter, or live scores a press away on
your phone. For updates on match day all you had was the radio and the hum of
the crowd.
Who can forget where you went for
the confirmation of the day's results? Five o clock, sports report and then the
classifieds with the late, great James Alexander Gordon.
So, with my football club out of
action for the foreseeable future, I have decided to take up my time with short
blogs featuring the goings on of a fictional football club from a fictional
county in England. The team's name is Leighstone Athletic, a lower league club
who play in yellow and black and who, over a decade or so earlier, experienced a glory
period in its history. However, a swift decline on the pitch sees them
struggling at the foot of the fourth division.
The story will commence in May 1992.
There is no Premier League, nor has such a thought been conceived, there is no
SKY TV, just four divisions and then,
beneath that, the dreaded drop into non-league. I aim to generally use real
clubs as opposition but may, occasionally, introduce a fictional team for the sake of storytelling. However, despite these amendments to football history, the
world exists as it did in 1992. John Major is PM, Ferguson is manager of Manchester
United who have just lost the title to arch rivals Leeds and Graham Taylor is
preparing his England team for Euro 92.
The story is told in first person,
from the point of view of Tel (Terry) a mad, lifelong supporter, raised on the
terraces and who bleeds yellow and black.
And so the story commences ...
