I support Stockport County. Thank you, thank you, no flowers please; donations instead to the Stockport County Supporters’ Trust or, failing that, the Mike’s Premier Sports Subscription Fund.
Stockport were demoted two weeks ago, though in reality the defeat at Crewe merely confirmed what we had all known for many months: that County’s 60-year run in the Football League was coming to an end.
In my part of the world, demotion is a familiar experience. Scarborough went out of the League in 1999 after the infamous Jimmy Glass goal which saved Carlisle Utd. A further relegation in 2006 put the Seasiders in the Conference North with a 10-point deduction for entering administration. They were relegated again, only before they could compete in the Northern Premier League they were wound up in the High Court with debts of £2.5m. They reformed as Scarborough Athletic and compete in the Northern Counties East League but, with the McCain Stadium in a state of disrepair, they must share a ground with Bridlington Town.
York City’s history mirror’s Stockports. In 2003 a Supporters’ Trust took over the club. The following year they were demoted, failing to win any of their last twenty matches of the season. They have fared rather better than Scarborough outside the Football League; they were beaten by Oxford Utd in the 2010 Conference Play-Off Final. It was their second trip to Wembley in a year having lost the FA Trophy Final in 2009 to Stevenage Borough.
I started following Stockport in the mid-90s. I was born there and grew up down the road in the Derbyshire town of New Mills, though we moved to North Yorkshire when I was young. Then, Stockport were managed by the excellent Dave Jones and achieved both promotion to what I still call the second division in 1997, as well as reaching the League Cup semi finals having knocked out Blackburn, West Ham (remember the Iain Dowie own goal?) and Southampton. In the semi we even beat Premier League Middlesbrough 1-0 in the away leg, though a 2-0 defeat at Edgeley Park in the first leg meant even that fine result would not be enough.
We have bounced around the divisions since then. Good times have been known. The best atmosphere I have ever known at a match was when we beat Swindon Town 3-0 on 3rd March 2007, completing what remains a Football League record of nine straight wins without conceding a goal. I still have the ticket stub pinned to my bedside table.
A play-off place was just missed despite a last day 5-0 win at Darlington. The following season, though, we went up, beating Rochdale 3-2 at Wembley with a quite excellent goal from Liam Dickinson. That season Dickinson had been by a mile the best player in the division. The Wembley win was his last match for the club as he was sold to neighbours Derby County, for whom he never played. His career since has seen him loaned here and there. Frankly, he should never have been sold.
His sale, though, hinted at our financial straits which would see us enter administration late in the following season. Stockport were sold in 2003 to Sale Sharks owner Brian Kennedy. County, Sale and Kennedy formed the accursed ‘Cheshire Sports’, with Kennedy now owning Edgeley Park, into which Sale Sharks moved, even though Sale is no more in Stockport than Barnet is in Watford.
Kennedy sold the club to the Supporters’ Trust in July 2005. The Trust had the club’s best interest at heart but no money. Demotion seemed certain until ex-player Jim Gannon took over as manager and turned the team around. Survival was achieved on the last say of the season with a 0-0 draw against champions Carlisle. Two years later, we were promoted with a team full of young local players and intelligent cheap signings playing excellent football, even if the blasted egg-chasers kept ruining the pitch every Friday evening.
Administration inevitably came late in the 2008/09 season, with the points deduction not quite enough to see us relegated thanks again to the excellent management of Gannon, who even turned down a chance to move to Brighton in order to chase promotion to the second division which would never come. Gannon was laid off by the administrators and replaced by Gary Ablett, under whom the first of two straight relegations followed.
The impoverished County now find themselves in the Conference. Will we be one of the bigger clubs in the league? I fear a haemorrhaging of support for a club with two massive Champions League sides on our doorstep. (Though never, ever make the mistake of calling this Cheshire side ‘Mancunians’.)
If you follow a club like Stockport you do not do it for the glory. I shall be at every match my finances permit me to attend; and at least I’m handy for the trips to York and Darlington. The Conference is now almost universally professional so will perhaps feel like, in effect, the fifth division of the Football League. But it is administered separately and differently and is fiercely competitive. I do not expect promotion back to the League immediately.
What I will miss is the media coverage. Some County matches will be televised live by Premier Sports, a minority broadcaster to which I do not intend to begin subscribing. More dispiriting, though, will be our absence from the BBC’s excellent Football League Show. Catching up with highlights will now involve trawls through the internet.
That aside, though, I do not feel shame about our new lowly status. Non-league is full of household names: Luton Town, Wimbledon, Wrexham, Grimsby Town, Darlington, Cambridge Utd, Lincoln City. Matches at York City which I occasionally attend do not resemble wakes; they are lively, competitive affairs. It is now up to the people of Stockport to make sure we retain our loyal, if small, support base. Hopefully, the club will be re-energized by not being beaten week in, week out. We must sort our organization out though; the Conference is, unusually for football, run ably and diligently.
I look forward, perhaps oddly, to the FA Trophy, a tournament we could genuinely win, and the qualifying rounds of the FA Cup. These are always intriguing occasions and the desire to get a high-profile cup tie against somebody like Sheffield United or Charlton Athletic will be bigger than ever. County can either feel defeated by our non-league status or embrace it. Life will be what we make of it.
