Reply To: What is the Truth

[CMC]

A post on Bury from another forum. Now this does not relate to anyone at SUFC but think about it.

Hi, I haven’t posted on here in a long time and it is hard to know where to begin having skimmed through some of the posts. I am a member and regular at Bury AFC games though, just to give you an indication as to where my post will go.

I think it is important to go from the start, albeit briefly. Stewart Day took over the club in 2013 – a liar, a fantasist, a poor and shady businessman and someone who had very little in the way of money. The club had suffered some recent financial problems, but nothing compared with what was to come. Indeed, Neville Neville (the father of Gary and Phil, and the man who brought Day to the club) built on Day’s fantasy when he arrived, claiming the club was hours from going bust, it categorically wasn’t. Day used this lie to manipulate fans and the media into believing he was some kind of saviour. On top of that, he used the local media to warm himself to fans and the press, once more perpetuating an image of financial success and wealth along with painting a negative picture of the Bury FC he had ‘rescued.’

Within three years we’d recorded losses of nearly 7 million pounds. That was despite a promotion, league one football, an FA Cup run and some player sales. Numerous loans and dodgey schemes had been taken out and it was quite clear the club was being ran in a shambolic way. Now, here comes the interesting part when looking at what is going on in the present. Day befriended a certain group of fans, he bought them drinks at games, he gave them free access to the executive suite and used them as his mouthpiece on social media where many of them loudly talked up Day and his supposed wealth, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. Then at a number of fans forums, concerned supporters who wanted to speak up, or tried to, were either shouted down, thrown out the forum or in several cases, physically assaulted.

Now, can you guess which side of the fence these people are on now? Some fans of other clubs no doubt questioned why our fans didn’t do more to drive the crook out of the club, like Oldham have just done successfully. This above is one reason, as was the fact we had a God awful fans group which made it practically impossible. The fans group was then called Forever Bury and is now called Bury FC SS. Bury FC SS was publicly anti merge, unsurprisingly, their head is called Darren Bowerbank and he was a Stewart Day mouthpiece throughout Day’s reign of terror.

Steve Dale was handed the club by Day, (IMO), to finish us off. Day having lived out his fantasy as a football chairman and even managing to go on our local radio, having sold the club to Steve Dale for a pound, and saying he’d left us in a stronger position. He left us 12.5 million in debt, our ground remortgaged and essentially in the hands of an shore company and the club itself in the hands of an asset stripper.

When the club was expelled in 2019 that was the final nail in the coffin, despite a couple of consortiums trying to rescue us post expulsion, one led by some Bury fans. For months after expulsion there was a hope and belief we could be rescued and kick off in the national league north. Obviously this attempt fell through just before Covid and thus volunteers kicked on with Bury AFC. At this time there was no way financially we could get hold of Gigg Lane and thus it had to be Radcliffe’s ground, something which has served as a more than adequate substitute, especially for the level we are at. I loved Gigg Lane, but even in league 2 and 1 it was too big a ground for our club who, unless we were doing well or playing a local team, often limped to crowds of 2500/3000. I have seen references on here to Edgar Street and the Deva Stadium, both these grounds are much smaller than Gigg Lane, and with a united fanbase, they were/are much easier and accommodating for Chester and Hereford IMO.

Bury FC is dead. It was already insolvent by the time Day handed us over, without an official sale, to Steve Dale. Now despite a split fanbase and a global pandemic Bury AFC have gone from strength to strength, we budget conservatively, we don’t splash the cash, we haven’t tried to tug on fan heartstrings by signing ex players or appointing them as manager. In the three years since our work began we have recorded healthy profits, we won the NWCL Division one in our first full season, despite a strong challenge from two other clubs, and recently we came very close to reaching the first round of the FA Cup. With a 100% fan owned structure and fans able to vote on all important matters, and considering our blotted financial history, even before Stewart Day turned up, then surely it’d make perfect sense to just move us into Gigg Lane once the ground was secured.Of course this has not happened, and this is why.

Enter EST 1885 – a group set up by people with a small bit of wealth who were attached to the old regimes of bygone eras. They wanted to be running the show, they wanted to be back in their exec suites, they wanted to go in higher up the pyramid and, most importantly, they were neglectful with the truth. Ironically, it was around Halloween last year when news broke that they’d secured Gigg Lane. With it, they span a story that they’d rescued the club, they hadn’t, they categorically hadn’t. People however started to believe the original club had been saved, and EST 1885 would not reveal the truth of the matter, worse still, and like Day, they used a certain group of mouthpieces to operate on their behalf, the same pro Day brigade, and how this decision would bite them on the proverbial.
How did they get the deal for the ground over the line? They used taxpaying money via the local conservative MP, Bury being a marginal tory seat, and under the agreement that Gigg Lane would become a community hub as well as a football ground. Of course, rather than just making an agreement with Bury AFC to move us in they decided to make their own attempt to enter the pyramid, much higher up than where AFC were, and using the name Bury FC. This was of course rejected. It took many meetings with AFC, a terrible business plan from them, which included, in their own words, an attempt to franchise another none league club and rename it Bury and move it in to Gigg Lane, also budgeting for crowds of 3000 home fans every week, in tier 9. Absolutely ludicrous! Our board got involved and amended the plan and both groups agreed merge and with Bury AFC’s league place in the pyramid, move into Gigg Lane thus returning football to the ground with a successful community hub around it, backed by over 2 million pounds worth of funding, including money to build a 4g pitch so the ground could be hired out all year round. The council, government, FA, FSA and NWCL all urged merge. AFC’s board urged it, the investors/moneymen all did. Bury FC SS with their aggressive mouthpieces disagreed and wanted to form their own club, which would apparently be the ‘real’ Bury FC. Even though a no merge would mean all that funding on offer would be pulled, and all they’d have would be a ground with a pitch that needs serious investment.

There has been a vocal anti merge campaign, which, as mentioned, saw a joke of a protest outside the Neuven before our cup qualifier against North Shields. The potential for trouble caused the local junior games to all get called off. When I arrived at the game I saw 12 people standing near the ground with signs, it was embarrassing. Sadly, it wasn’t the end of it, as mentioned above, a group turned up during the game and hurled flares into the ground, injuring a player and a 9 year old girl. That was all in the name of no merge and ‘saving’ (go figure), the real Bury. A member of the SS board, a lad in his early 20s, unemployed and living on benefits with a several children and who can’t spell, punctuate or construct a coherent sentence, someone who thinks he’d be in a position of power for this ‘saved’ Bury FC, tweeted that the incident wasn’t serious because the girl hadn’t been badly injured. He then alleged it was a set up by Bury AFC to make the protest look bad. An ‘investigation’ into this tweet by Bury FC SS concluded the person who tweeted this had done nothing wrong.

If you have made it this far, then can I just say, this incident above is merely the tip of the iceberg. These are like Donald Trump esque supporters storming congress and calling it pro democracy.

So, of 1700 odd votes across both societies, a mere 286 blocked it by voting no to merge. Something like 90% of all voters were in favour, but the requirement was 66% of both groups. For some reason a large group of the mouthpieces celebrated at Gigg Lane last Friday, claiming Bury FC were back and they now think they are sailing in way up the pyramid and that thousands of fans are streaming back to Gigg Lane.

The truth is that a small group of not very nice people have blocked a return to Gigg Lane for the masses, along with a chance of unity, the chance of a happy conclusion to years of anger, sadness, bitterness and worry. Personally, I was disappointed, but I think long term this will only make AFC stronger, those who were on the fence before are now throwing their support behind Bury AFC, and with the SS sham at Gigg Lane losing money already, I’d be surprised if they aren’t seeing the ground repossessed before they even submit a league application, one which I am certain would be rejected anyway.

If you want to sum up the difference in mentality of both groups, a member of the Bury AFC CBS board is bricky by trade, working long hours in all weathers, though you couldn’t expect to meet a nicer man. He spends the rest of his spare time juggling fatherhood with working on the AFC board, totally voluntary. Meanwhile, the SS business plan included a 160k wage for the chairman. What a difference in mentality.

If you have made it this far and not fallen asleep then I applaud you. I will maybe post something football related if any of you get through this essay. :)