Leighstone Athletic ... a brief backstory

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 ...