With the recent demise of Bury Football Club with its expulsion
from the Football League after 134 years, this book first published in 2015, is
a timely reminder of what loss means both in the footballing and human sense.
Author Mat Guy takes a diary format look at his journey
through the 2014/15 season (with a couple of flashback chapters to 2006) as he
seeks to celebrate, “all that is great with the game of football, as seen
through the eyes of a club and fans rarely bothered by satellite television
cameras and the riches of the elite game.” It takes him from an early season
Europa League Qualifier in North Wales, to the Wessex League Premier Division over
the Festive period, via the Faroe Islands and North Cyprus, with Accrington
Stanley featuring large in the books twenty-six chapters.
From this book, it is evident that football for the author, like
for so many other people, has become deeply embedded in his psyche. For
example, the game and attending matches on his own brought solace for Guy when
his father took his own life. Whilst the affection he had for his grandfather
is warmly described in memories of the trips they took to watch Salisbury City
play. However, like the authors’ father and grandfather, the club was taken
away from him, when in 2014 the club was disbanded and with it the very
physical presence of their ground Victoria Park and the memories it evoked.
The sense of loss is at the centre of the book, as is though
the desire to once again feel the connection and almost child-like joy of
attending games as he did with his grandfather.
Does Guy achieve this? Well, the author certainly takes in
the full gamut of the football experience as the tradition, passion and
volunteer spirit that enables non-league clubs to exist is detailed with his
trips to games in the Wessex League. He also explores the rise of the Women’s
game as he takes in a World Cup Qualifier, the 2014/15 WSL Cup Final and the
momentous friendly international between England and Germany at Wembley.
The stand out chapters though are from 2006 as Guy reveals
to the reader football experiences that the average fan in the UK will never
get to, in trips to the outpost of the Faroe Islands and Northern Cyprus for the
ELF Cup (Equality, Liberty, Fraternity), with Crimea, Gagauzia, Greenland, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Tibet, Northern Cyprus and Zanzibar, the participants.
However, nearly a third of the chapters are devoted to Guy
and his fellow travellers as they find a new ‘home’ in the guise of Accrington
Stanley. It is somehow fitting that for the author his connection to the game
and what he feels is at the heart and soul of the match experience is found in
a club that folded back in 1966, only to be reborn in 1968 and once more find
its way back into the Football League. Guy is won over by the honesty, the friendliness
and eccentricity of the those who follow ‘Stanley’ home and away and the people
working to keep the club operating.
The finding of the connection at Accrington and indeed the
writing of the book and the different experiences along the way, are no doubt a
cathartic experience for Guy, who acknowledges in the final chapter that despite
the loss of Salisbury City and the memories of his grandfather at Victoria
Park, “it’s time to stop mourning, because it is all here in spirit.”
Right, now for all those associated with Bury FC, they will
be consumed by grief and will be mourning the loss of their team and what it
has meant to the town. All they have right now is memories, but Another Bloody Saturday gives us hope
that there is a new future born out of the spirit of the past.