A WEEK last Sunday my wife Emma and I went to the cinema in Leigh, and from a rather limited selection happened on a film called Pride.

It was based on a true story about a group of lesbians and gays in London who supported a Welsh pit village financially during the miner’s strike of 1984.

It was a cracking and uplifting flick and got me reminiscing about one of my favourite films, Brassed Off, which was also about the infamous dispute between British Coal backed by Thatcher and the NUM. I am steadfastly on the side of the miners.

Then again I couldn’t be anything else. My granddad worked on the coalface at the Chanters Colliery, one of the six Atherton pits, and then there is my beloved football team which was formed in 1916 by the pit owners as recreation for their workers.

The final mine in Atherton closed in 1966, so when the club celebrates its century in 2016 it will be 50 years since there was the industry bearing its name in the town.

The club hasn’t had anywhere near as much success in the second half of its existence compared to the first, but it did take the bold step to move out of the Bolton Combination in the early 1970s. The club was no longer a big fish in an always competitive little pond.

The decision to vacate the local footballing landscape has never been regretted, although there have been a fair amount of fallow periods over the ensuing years. There have also been times we wondered if all the effort was worth it.

A passage in a 1990s Clitheroe programme summed it up perfectly. It went something like: “Atherton Colls suffer from the joint evil of apathy and vandalism and they do very well to survive.”

There were times we went to the club with our hearts in our mouths wondering what part of the ground the vandals had wrecked this time.

In 2006 the towel was on the verge of being thrown in until a discreet appeal in the town gained us vital helpers whose input has been the platform for us to slowly, but surely, rejuvenate the club.

We are proud of our coal mining heritage just like our neighbours at Howe Bridge Mills FC will be with their link to the mills – another industry synonymous with the town which is unlikely to return.

The film got me thinking. I never worked down a mine and it wouldn’t be on my occupation bucket list but these proud, hard men who saw their Saturday football fix as an escape from their weekday danger built the club.

We wear the Collieries badge with pride and will do so forever in tribute to these brave souls who made the club feared back in the day.