There’s more than one Man United
All in all, it seemed somehow fitting that FC United of Manchester should have sealed their promotion from the Evo-Stik Northern Premier to the Vanarama Conference North with a 1-0 win over Stourbridge on the sort of night on which we had become so accustomed to watching Manchester United jostle for continental honours.
The smaller club’s backstory — how the purchase of Manchester United by Malcolm Glazer persuaded a small but sizeable knot of the club’s fans to detach and start anew — was well-documented at the time of its birth which, in one of those can-you-believe-how-the-time-has-flown moments, is already ten years back over our shoulders.
Few people outside the city and the Greater Manchester region have clocked in with anything much more than a fleeting interest since then, but the club continues to prosper even as the volume of green and yellow scarves have disappeared around Old Trafford and the proposed Red Knights consortium — remember them? — came to naught.
Tuesday night was one of those moments where the new club forced its head above the ocean waves of the Premier League and Champions League — helped no doubt by the absence of English sides featuring in Europe this week — the flares and pitch invasion that followed their confirmed promotion capturing the unrestrained elation of the evening.
‘Rebels yell as FC United go up’, it said on the front page of the Manchester Evening News which has been associated for decades with matters of interest at Old Trafford, Maine Road and the Etihad Stadium.
The semi-professional outfit is now only two more promotions away from playing in the Football League and the presence next season in the Conference North of Stockport County — a side that played its football in League One just five seasons ago — is further evidence of just how close they are to the big leagues.
Fans of the original United’s rivals may well beg to disagree — FC United supporters also sing lustily about how “City’s gonna die” — but here is a story that supporters throughout England and beyond should hope can continue to succeed, both on and off the pitch.
Reports this week on the stabilising of season ticket prices suggest that Premier League clubs may finally be coming round to the idea that they don’t need to milk fans completely dry thanks to the ever-spiralling figures involved in TV right deals. But how many have already been priced out of their club’s grounds?
That is why stories like FC United’s are so important.
For all their success on the pitch, it is their efforts off it that have characterised the young operation. Owned and run by its members, its manifesto includes the development of strong links with the local community, affordable-as-possible ticket prices and a desire to “avoid outright commercialism”.
Stourbridge, their opponents last Tuesday, boasted shirts with Bhandal Dental Practise splashed across their shirts. United’s classic kit of red shirts, white shorts and black socks were adorned only by their old-school crest and the name of the kit supplier.
A non-profit organisation, the club will leave behind a decade of nomadism behind by starting next season in their purpose-built Broadhurst Stadium which, in another pleasing display of symmetry, lies just a mile from Newton Heath where the original Manchester United was nurtured to life.
The stadium, built at a cost of £6.5m, of which roughly half has been provided by the club’s 4,066 members, will be officially opened late next month when FC United squeeze a friendly with the mighty Benfica in between appointments with Workington and Hereford FC. Heady times.
The venue will hold 5,000 punters — average crowds right now run at approximately 2,000 — but the ground is being built with a view to being put to use by the local community on non-match days while the food and drink that fans will consume is being sourced locally rather than from the vats, say, of Anheuser-Busch.
FC United are not the first club to evince such principals. AFC Wimbledon are among their predecessors in the UK while Shamrock Rovers and Cork City are other examples of how sports clubs can entwine success and a sense of belonging thought lost by enfranchising their supporters and forging ties with the local authorities and communities.
That their latest climb up football’s ladder came in a week when their big brother was adjudged to have the league’s highest salary bill, £215.8m, only added to the perception of two clubs in one city divided by far more than the eight miles between their grounds. You could only wish them well.
Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie Twitter: @Rackob
