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Bury FC are not a special case says Mail columnist Martin Samuel and should not be allowed to play in League Two next season. Clubs like Hereford had to start again after they went under.
'Quite rightly, 70 of 71 Football League
clubs voted not to treat Bury differently by readmitting them to the
competition next season.
Previously, clubs that have gone into liquidation and reformed have returned further down football's pyramid, as seems fair.
Many
have rebuilt on a sounder financial footing and are again close to
where they started. There is, however, an unhealthy sense of entitlement
around Bury.
It is argued they have
history — as if those who folded before them did not — and should resume
in League Two next season, preferred to a better-run club, denied
promotion from the National League.
Local politicians are on their side with one, Ivan Lewis, MP for Bury South, threatening to take the EFL to court.
Yet, where was Lewis, or Andy Burnham, mayor of Manchester, when Hereford United went under?
If
anything, Hereford's FA Cup exploits as a Southern League club
defeating Newcastle in 1972 are more readily recalled than Bury winning
it in 1900 and 1903.
And Chester City —
founded in 1885, incidentally, the same year as Bury — produced one of
British football's greatest goalscorers, Ian Rush.
The
fact is, none of this mattered when these clubs could not afford to
exist. To treat Bury as a special case in effect endorses the methods
that brought them here.
It says that
poor ownership does not matter, reckless over-spending does not matter,
that as long as you have been in the club long enough, we'll see you
right. 'Bury deserved more respect from the football family,' bemoaned
Burnham.
No, the football family
deserved more respect from Bury. They are not special, everybody is.
That's why everybody gets treated the same.'