600 travelled down from Bury. They travelled with their tinfoil FA Cup trophies, blue-and-white knitwear and flags carrying messages of defiance. ‘Shook by anger we shed many tears they tried to destroy us we are still here,’ read one, tied to the fence at Harborough Town.
They travelled with hope and memories of classic FA Cup ties of yore. Like the time they came back from two down to beat Jack Charlton’s Middlesbrough at Gigg Lane or a late equaliser to force a replay against Graham Taylor’s Watford side with John Barnes on the wing.
Or the win against Burnley clinching a date with one of the great Liverpool sides at Anfield in the fifth round in 1980.
They travelled to the neat and tidy little ground they call The Beehive on the edge of Market Harborough unbeaten and in hope of reaching the FA Cup proper for the first time since their expulsion from the EFL in 2019.
Those have been a long five years. The first two empty as the pandemic stalled the launch of the phoenix club Bury AFC.
Bury fans travelled in their hundreds as their side attempted to secure a place in the FA Cup first round
The lowest-ranked team still in the competition faced off against their Southern League Premier Division Central rivals Harborough
‘I’d open my front door and see the ground deteriorating,’ said Pete Cullen, a fan of 51 years who lived for 37 of them in terraced house in Gigg Lane. ‘Vandals broke in, smashed the windows, the electricity was off so no alarms. It was horrible, like seeing one of your close relatives withering away.
‘I was so angry about the whole situation. My club had been allowed to die seemingly by the authorities. I didn’t care if United beat City or Blackburn Rovers beat Burnley, it was irrelevant. I lost complete interest and detached myself from football. It didn’t exist for me.’
The fan base split in two, those who went to watch Bury AFC, formed by fans, playing at nearby Radcliffe and winning promotion to the top division of the North West Counties in its first full season, and those who refused to cut ties with the original club still based at Gigg Lane. Last year, after months of disagreement, the factions merged and restored the club at its spiritual home, breathing new life into the new fan-owned version of the club.
This year, the stadium has been spruced up, licensed to open to its full 12,500 capacity and a 3G pitch has made it a community hub, and there was £600,000 in the bank at the end of the last financial year. Bury’s football club is once more in rude health albeit far from past glories.
‘There was a hole in the heart of the community,’ said chairman Marcel de Matas. ‘Even for those people who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves Bury supporters.
‘Businesses, pubs, shops, residents all saw what it meant to have a level of vibrancy return to the club and the town. It is all inextricably linked. And we’ve found out scoring a goal or winning a game in the ninth tier means just as much to supporters as it did against Bolton Wanderers in League One. The sheer joy of winning a local derby at Radcliffe in the last round of the FA Cup took us back to what it used to be like. That emotional connection hasn’t disappeared.’
Bury FC, the last survivors from the ninth tier and the FA Cup’s lowest ranked team going into the fourth qualifying round, arrived at Harborough unbeaten in 21 games in all competitions.
They had won five ties to get this far, which is as many as they won when they were FA Cup winners for the second time, in 1903.
All of them were against teams above them in the pyramid. Radcliffe are National League North but this proved a tie too far against Harborough, a thriving club formed by the amalgamation of three others and quietly moving through the tiers.
They currently reside two higher than Bury FC in the Southern League Premier Division Central and were stronger on the day, worth the victory in front of a capacity crowd of 1,600 although it was tense at times.
But the Shakers’ fairytale ultimately came to an end, as Ben Stephens netted a penalty for the hosts
Ben Stephens scored the only goal of the game, a penalty disputed by Bury who were aggrieved not be awarded one of their own as they rallied towards the end.
Harborough go into the draw for the first round for the first time in their history, dreaming of a tie with Wrexham or Birmingham, the new showbiz clubs of League One.
Bury FC’s 600 fans returned north, grumbling about the referee and retraining their focus on the long climb through the tiers. ‘It’s going to be very hard to get back to the EFL and it doesn’t really matter if we do or we don’t,’ said Cullen. ‘It’s more important to avoid the mistakes made in the past.
‘I’m enjoying the non-league experience. We’re going to new grounds meeting fantastic people who toil to keep their clubs alive and we’re trying not to be Big Time Charlies. We used to be minnows in the EFL, in the ninth tier we’re a big fish.’
