Bury AFC
Born from the collapse of Bury FC in 2019, the fan-owned Bury AFC fought their way back to the historic Gigg Lane. One of football's most important community stories.
In August 2019, Bury FC were expelled from the English Football League after 125 years, the victim of reckless ownership and unsustainable debt. It was one of the most significant club collapses in modern English football, and it left a town without the institution that had defined its Saturdays since 1885. Supporters responded the way Manchester supporters tend to: they built their own. Bury AFC was formed by fans, owned by fans, and started again at the bottom.
The story since has been about getting home. After years away, the supporters’ trust secured Gigg Lane, the historic ground, and football returned to it. The level is non-league and the budgets are tiny, but the principle – that a football club belongs to the people of its town, not to whoever happens to hold the deeds – is the entire point. Bury AFC is one of the clearest examples in the country of fan ownership as a rescue rather than a gimmick.
Gigg Lane is a proper old ground in a proper football town. Bury is on the Metrolink at the northern end of the line. A home game here is cheap, warm and meaningful in a way that the Premier League, for all its spectacle, rarely manages.