The Forgotten Fifteen: How Bury Triumphed in British Football's Worst Year by Bentley James

Author:Bentley, James [Bentley, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SilverWood Books
Published: 2015-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

Bury concede one of four goals away at Halifax Town on an

awful afternoon in January 1985.

(Copyright: Johnny Meynell)

The week after that opening day of the season, Bury had comprehensively dismantled the Shaymen 3–0 at Gigg Lane, but this game was to be an entirely different story. In a report alliteratively-headlined ‘SHAY SHOCKER FOR SORRY SHAKERS ’, Dyson writes of treacherous conditions underfoot as the rain that features in the mind’s eye when thinking of the ground name was replaced by snow and the temperature dipped below zero, which would have had those away followers bouncing up and down for warmth on the terracing in front of the ground’s speedway track.

Bury took the lead halfway through the first half, after a Winston White cross-shot that looked destined for the goal was latched on to by Craig Madden who made absolutely sure that the ball would end up in the back of the net. The Shakers then remained largely in control until a Town equaliser which caused Bury’s game to disintegrate. Poor covering from Leighton James allowed a Halifax player to get a cross past him which was met successfully by a Town striker, then David Brown allowed a Trevor Ross back pass to bobble out of his safe grasp, leading to the cross from which Halifax grabbed their second.

‘Suddenly too many of the Bury players were filled with self-doubt and disappeared from proceedings for long stretches. Halifax repeatedly got to the ball first, were more prepared to take risks and seemed better equipped in the footwear department,’ wrote Dyson, the last point referencing a 7–0 defeat for Bury at Chesterfield in 1976 when Bury wore hopelessly ineffective boots on a similar ice-rink of a surface.

Halifax were reportedly lucky still to be in front as their goalkeeper Paddy Roche made some excellent saves from Joe Jakub and Wayne Entwistle, but they sealed Bury’s heaviest defeat of the season with two goals in the last five minutes of the game.

On the same page of the Bury Times of Friday 18 January that the dissection of the Halifax game appears is a short piece that’s slightly at odds with such a catastrophic defeat. Without a game the following day, fans are instead offered the opportunity to book on to the supporters’ coach for the long, long trip to Colchester on Saturday 26 January. Few can have read the report and thought that what they really, really wanted to do after consuming the detail of Bury’s hopelessness in West Yorkshire was to commit to a coach fare of £8.50 for a journey which would begin at 8am.

Coaches had been in the news just over a month before the match after pop group Bucks Fizz had been involved in an accident on board their tour bus as they left a show in Newcastle. Singer Mike Nolan was the most seriously injured when their coach crashed into some roadworks on 11 December, and after he had ‘died’ on the operating table and was given the Last Rites twice, he was beginning to recover as Bury travelled to Essex.

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