HIS name won’t appear in any all-time XIs nor is a statue in the offing at Gigg Lane but there is a legitimate argument for Tom Youngs to be considered as the most important Bury player of the millennium.

Two goals defined a relatively inglorious Shakers career, twice saving the club from dropping out of the Football League towards a bleak future.

Had Youngs not scored against Notts County at Meadow Lane in 2006, the Magpies’ late rally to claim a 2-2 draw may have been decisive.

Had Youngs not been in the right place at the right time 12 months later to score a winner at Walsall, the threat of relegation was equally valid.

To this day, the Shakers have never come closer to Conference football. The striker’s reward? Just 49 days after scoring at the Bescot Stadium he was released on a free transfer.

It is the story either side of Youngs’ time at Bury which bears closer examination and which inspired him to write a book, entitled ‘What Dreams Are (Not Quite) Made Of.’ As it says on the cover: No fame, no fortune, just football… and Multiple Sclerosis.

Youngs never found another professional club after leaving Bury in 2007, trials with Southport and Stafford amounting to nothing, a spell at Cambridge City wrecked by a bad hamstring tear.

Still in his twenties, he completed a journalism degree at Staffordshire University which he started whilst playing for the Shakers – even spending some time on work placement with the Bury Times.

Married to Michelle and father to two young girls, Hannah and Orla, his life was brought into sharp perspective, however, when he was diagnosed with MS two years ago.

“It was a big shock for me and difficult to take at the time,” he told us. “You feel uncertain, not sure what will happen to you so you sit and read all the forums online bit it’s such an enigmatic disease it affects everyone so differently.

“For me it was my eyes at first. I couldn’t see my computer screen clearly at work, it was blurry, so I got an emergency appointment at the opticians. They couldn’t find any problems with my eyesight.

“When I got diagnosed I discovered there is a good support network out there – my MS nurse has been fantastic and so have the neurologists.

“I’d always in the back of my mind thought I could write a book about my experiences in football but it had been on the back burner.

“When this all happened I thought ‘why not do it and get some exposure for MS and what it feels like to be diagnosed with it.

“When I first got told I had it I wanted to keep it to myself. People weren’t sure how to react to it, or thought I was going to die in three weeks or something.

“There is a lot of stuff which needs to get out in the open, so if by telling my story it can help a bit, I’ll feel it has been worth the hard work.”

Youngs looks back fondly at his time with Bury, albeit it was a stage of his career that rarely went to plan.

He had made his name with Cambridge United but after short spells with Northampton Town and Leyton Orient, he picked a chaotic time to land at Gigg Lane.

“It was a mixed bag at Bury because it had been a tough time for the club financially,” he said. “Graham (Barrow) got the sack and though I never had any problem with Chris (Casper) I didn’t feel integral to his plans at any point.

“When the chance came at Notts County I at least felt I’d given something back and made a contribution. It got me another contract I wasn’t expecting too.

“I started the next season OK but got a couple of injuries and then they brought Glynn Hurst in, who started like a house on fire.

“I thought ‘that was that’ because I hardly even got on the bench but then one day going to Walsall Chris came up to me and said he needed me to start.

“I look at the goal I scored on TV and it looks like I read the situation quicker than anyone else but at the time I was probably too honest. The defender (Anthony Gerard – cousin of Liverpool legend Steven) cleared it straight to me.

“We’d wrecked Walsall’s promotion party and I know Boston were deducted 10 points in the final table, so we don’t know what would have happened.

“But had Bury gone out of the league you’d have to say a lot of more financially secure clubs have struggled to go back up.”

Youngs, now 36, abandoned a career in the media after struggling to juggle the demands of the job with his family life. He has now worked in accountancy at Greene King for the last six years.

For computer-literate football fans of a certain age, however, his name will always muster a certain amount of excitement.

“Championship Manager Three,” he smiled. “Yes, when I was coming through at Cambridge as a youngster the game was probably at its zenith.

“Nowadays the statistics on the game are incredible, they have people supplying them from the clubs themselves.

“But back then they must have slipped up somewhere because I ended up as a guaranteed England international.

“They can’t be right all the time, I suppose.”

Tom Youngs’ book ‘What Dreams Are (Not Quite) Made Of’ is available online through Amazon and Waterstones and will be published on August 6 to coincide with the opening day of the new season.