Shakers in shadow of giants, but travel well
1:00pm Thursday 9th February 2012 in Bury FC By Nick Jackson
THE Shakers’ place in football history is assured – twice winners of the FA Cup in 1900 and 1903 and a fourth-place finish in the top flight in the 1925-6 season.
Their 6-0 victory over Derby County in the 1903 final remains the highest ever winning margin in an FA Cup final.
Granted, it is a long time ago, but it is a proud record which many bigger clubs than Bury cannot boast.
The club slipped out of the equivalent version of the Premier League in 1928 and they have become one of the North West’s Cinderella teams, along with neighbours Rochdale, Oldham and Accrington, while the Manchester clubs City and United, and, to a lesser extent, Bolton Wanderers, have sucked in much of the support which might have otherwise come to Gigg Lane.
As Bury continue to punch above their weight in League One with Richie Barker’s side in a healthy 10th position, Forever Bury, the trust which runs their supporters group, still grapples with the reality of comparatively small gates at Gigg Lane – currently averaging 3,773 per home game, the fifth smallest in the division Some might call the trust’s treasurer Derek Boulton a pessimist – he calls himself a realist – but I would call him a pragmatist.
“It was inevitable Bury were going to slip down the football pyramid over time,” he said. “The shear economics of the situation meant they were never going to be able to compete with the Manchester clubs and others around them.
“You’re never going to change the habits of a lifetime for people who have moved out of Manchester into Bury, but support City or United,” he said. “You can try to get them interested in Bury by getting them at a young age and going into schools. People have talked about a long- term plan, but these things have been on the table for years and years.
“Nothing is going to change purely because of geography. We are in the same situation as Oldham Athletic and Rochdale. I am not being defeatist about it, but I am a realist.”
Bury’s crowds are up on last year’s average of 3,300 when they were in League Two, but Boulton points out that figure is boosted by the presence of “sleeping giants” like Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday and Preston, who bring with them large away support when they visit Gigg Lane.
Two more fixtures in that category remain – the game against Huddersfield on March 3 and the last home clash of the season against derby rivals Oldham Athletic.
“Without these fixtures, our gates would be similar to what they were last season,” said Boulton. “It is always going to be hard work to turn things around.”
Boulton cites Bury’s two seasons in the second tier of English football in the late 1990s as an example of how strange the ebb and flow of fans’ interest in the club is.
At the end of the 1996-7 season when Bury sealed the championship and promotion to the second tier, they played Millwall at Gigg Lane in front of a capacity crowd of 10,000 with many other fans locked out of the ground.
In the first game of the new season in what is now the Championship,Bury played Reading in front of a crowd of 5,000, with 500 of those fans from the Berkshire club.
“That means that there were only 4,500 interested in watching Bury at the higher level, compared to double that on the last day of the previous season,” said Boulton. “And you have to wonder why that is.”
For all the disappointment in the volume of home support Bury’s support for away journeys remains disproportionately high.
They frequently take up to 50 per cent of their home support away with them and, for the match against Charlton, 250 Bury fans travelled to south east London on a bitterly cold Tuesday night and on the back of a poor 3-0 defeat at Rochdale four days previously, attended by more than 2,000 Bury fans.
“We are apparently level with Rochdale as the best away support in League One as a percentage of our home support,” said Boulton. “So we appear to have a small, but dedicated, fan base, and as such we should take great heart in that.”
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