A look at some of the megalomaniacs, rich boys and outrageous liars who in the recent past have explored the possibilty of taking over the mighty Shakers and what might have happened if we'd let these bloody nutters loose on our beloved club.
In the late 1990s or possibly early 2000s, when Sale Sharks RUFC owner Kennedy decided he wanted to turn his club into the Manchester United of the Rugby Union world, he realised the club's current home at Heywood Road probably wasn't going to cut it at the highest level. He needed access to a bigger and better stadium to kick-start his global domination campaign and he very wisely spotted that Stade de Gigg would fit the bill nicely. Unfortunately, Mr Kennedy being the megalomaniac dreamer that he was, ground-sharing wasn't on his agenda. He decided he wanted to buy Bury FC, lock stock and barrel and move things forward that way.
He made out that his 'involvement' in Bury Football Club would be beneficial for all parties but it was widely feared amongst the Shakers camp that his plan for Bury FC would initially involve us being the tenants in our own home and that he'd ultimately put us out of business and make Gigg Lane the home of the Sharks. You can see that perhaps it wasn't such an ill-conceived plan when you realise that it would only take the re-shuffling of a few seats in the South Stand to change the wording from Shakers to Sharks. Clearly not just a hat-rack, that Kennedy bloke.
Fortunatley the plan never materialised - either we told him to sling his hook, or he realised that Rugby is a crap sport for upper class homosexuals and nobody else cares about it. Bye bye Brian, and bloody good riddance. Anyway, the clearly deluded old tit then decided he was going to move Sale Sharks to Maine Road when Man City moved out. They now play at Edgely Park, presumably because the FA wouldn't let them move into Wembley.
Its now the year 2008, and i'm looking forward to the match at Gigg this Saturday, Bury Sharks are playing Wasps in the Big Benders Rugby Premiership League. Meanwhile down at Redvales, AFC Bury 2002 are at home to Rammy United. I might go if its less than a pound to get in.
Read the articleIn the early 21st century, Bury Football Club almost ceased to exist. Well in the end we didn't but at the time it all seemed a little bit hairy. A combination of the after-effects of relegation from the new old first division and the evil Herr Warnock, plus the collapse of ITV Digital and some general poor senior management sent the club into a downward spiral which saw them in so much trouble that we even got mentioned on Football Focus. We waved buckets about, much to the amusement of many of our dear neighbours, we 'sold' the seats in what must go down as the greatest football swindle of modern times (I don't even know where mine is, I've certainly never sat on it and if its mine I should be able to take it home - the wife would love that) and generally begged our way out of the mire.
In the midst of these dark times, a beacon of hope very briefly shone out. He was an elderly gent who called himself Beau. In retrospect, I think he must have been the inspiration for Catherine Tate's 'How very dare you!' character. He declared that he was heading up a consortium to buy Bury FC, and to pump vast quantities of money into it. He was actually interviewed by Granada Reports outside Gigg wearing a coat that was obviously bought for a pound off Bury market saying something like, "We've got 100 million right away, and access to a further 200 million within 12 months. We are not short of a bob or two".
What he WAS short of was the ability to tell the truth, it transpired. At one of those suporters meetings at the Town Hall a few weeks later, Nev Neville declared, "These rumours are killing our club. Its time to put up, or shut up". Fortunately, he chose the latter option and we didn't hear from him again. Meanwhile the buckets kept being shaken, and the seats kept being sold, Forever Bury came into being and the club survived.
Beau and his imaginary consortium take control of Bury FC. Bury, being Bury, don't bother to check him out and after a few weeks, with all the club's creditors banging on the door, Bury FC shuts down and we all go and support Rochdale. Okay then Oldham. Man United anybody?
Read the articleGoing back a little bit further with this one, it must have been about 1990, 91-ish. I don't know where the rumour came from but it went something like Ron Wood (greetings card magnate, not the Rolling Stones guitarist) was planning to buy the club and put his good pal Bryan Robson in charge as manager.
This was just before Robson's first managerial appointment at Middlesbrough, and Birthdays (Ron Wood's greetings card company) was booming and Wood was believed to be worth many millions of pounds. In truth, they were actually good pals, he was worth about a hundred million and Birthdays did become the club sponsor - an association which lasted a good ten years or so, but Ron never did buy into the Shakers and I suspect Bryan had never even heard of us.
Well If Ron and Bryan had got their teeth into Bury FC, great things could have happened. With Ron's millions, and Bryan's standing in the game we could have signed decent players and had a good side. Don't forget that when he went to Middlesbrough that year, he did well for a few years - its only since then that he's proved to be rubbish. Having said all that, if we'd gone up with Ron Wood's money and Bryan Robson's managerial expertise, would that have been any different to the success we had with Hugh Eaves' cash, and Sir Stan Ternent's managership? In fact it would have been worse because there would have been the additional Man United connection and when Robson, inevitably did eventually fuck off to a bigger club, we would have been left in a financial mess like we were after Colin but probably worse. That was a lucky escape then.
In November 2000, a Norweigian billionaire called Atle Brynestad decided he wanted to buy into Bury FC. He came to watch the FA Cup first round game at home to Northwich Victoria. We took the lead, then conceeded a late equaliser and it finished a 1-1 draw. There was a low attendance and a typically quiet Gigg Lane atmosphere. The fact that we lost the replay was probably of absolutely no interest whatsoever to him as he, having seen more than enough, returned from whence he came and nothing more was heard from him.
Oh the usual - promotions, Wembley appearances, trophies, we could have been an established Premiership side now. No honestly, we really could.
Read the articleHe said he was heading up a consortium to assume control of Bury FC and er that's it so far, its all gone a bit quiet.
Goodness knows. Whatever could have happened, still could because something may still be on the cards. Time will tell.
At the exact same time that Terry ‘Greengrass’ Robinson packed his bags (with Paddy Kenny secreted in the lining of his suitcase) and sneaked over the Penines to Sheffield United, he informed us that there was interest from a group called Mansport Developments who were keen on taking over Bury Football Club. It was exciting, we’d never had reason to use the word ‘consortium’ before. The two key players here for Mansport were David Jones and Paul Barrett.
Then the Manchester Evening News revealed that Jones and Barrett had been convicted together in 1997 of some illegal jiggery pokery and imprisoned for 18 months. Several of Barrett's companies had also been put into liquidation and were under investigation by the DTI. Following this revelation, Barrett resigned from Mansport. David Jones, it transpired, was a former bankrupt who had been disqualified from acting as a company director for 12 years following irregularities in his running of another company.
The collapse of this deal left Bury up shit creek as the mortgage on the ground was not a solid one and certain lenders wanted their money back. Interest was at a crippling thousand pounds per day when those two dour-faced stalwarts Fred Mason and John Smith took up the reins. Smith & Mason revealed that Jones had been trying to arrange another highly risky, high interest loan to keep us going which they cancelled sharpish. Anyway, thanks largely to the Manchester Evening News, Mansport fucked off and the rest is history.
Having been taken over by a bunch of crooks, the club would probably have been shut down and the stadium sold for housing to make a dozen or so unscrupulous con-men a great deal of money.
In a nutshell: Turkish bloke. Had a son who could play football. Wanted to buy a football club so his son could play professional football for them. Now when I say Edward Tarsus (the son) could play football, what I mean by that is that he was much better at football than any of his friends, or his friends’ friends and could do almost 50 keepy uppies in a row, or at least he had done once although no-one was watching so it’s a bit debateable (but no-one ever says that to his dad or they end up taking a swim wearing a pair of concrete slippers, if you know what I mean).
Tarsus snr was in the hotel business, and he obviously had a great deal of money. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he was passionate about Bury Football Club, he just wanted a cheap club to buy and probably could have picked up Bury for about a million. His son, Edward did actually play for us for a while but he wasn’t very good. In the end, Alex Tarsus lost interest in Bury, or maybe his precious boy decided to take up Basketball and he buggered off to try to buy the Harlem Globetrotters.
He was actually believed to be a part of the aforementioned Mansport group but Tarsus distanced himself from them but then added that he wouldn’t rule out some involvement in the future. In retrospect, this makes some sense as Mansport couldn’t have given a flying fuck about Bury FC either.
With Tarsus in control at Bury, each and every manager would be sacked as soon as they dropped his son who by now would probably be close to retirement age so no doubt he would be appointed the manager and all his greasy Turkish mates could come over and get the occasional game, if not a good shower.