A fantastic day in Bury saw FC pick up their first piece of silverwear, the division 2 league title. Glorious sunshine greeted Gigg Lane as a new record attendance of 6,023 turned out to salute the champions.
The match itself was nothing to write home about, with the first half being much of a midfield battle against the gritty Great Harwood. FC had a few free kick around the Harwood box taken by Torpey but failed to test the keeper. The second half was even more of a fiesty affair with hard challenges going in by both sides, making for a stop start match. The fouls continued until FC bear the brunt of them, and a challenge by Power which the Harwood player made the most of resulted in him being sent off. Late on in the match the sides were even as a Harwood player also saw his marching orders. What was looking like a 0-0 draw and a poor one at that, got worse for FC with almost the last kick of the game. They were caught on the back foot leaving Harwood with a 3 on 2 situation enabling them to pass around FC's defence leaving Fisher the chance to smash into the top corner and win it 1-0 for Harwood. Not the best way to end your season at home, but the fans didn't care because today was all about the effort they and all the staff and players at FC had put in all season, to make it one of the finest many have ever experienced.
After the match the players were presented with the end of season awards. Rory Patterson picked up the Russel Delaney player of the season award, Josh Howard the junior supporters award and Steve Spencer getting the acknowledgement of his team mates with the Player's Player award. Following that the players huddled round as captain Dave Chadwick picked up FC's first ever trophy and the celebrations began. The lads did a lap of honour round the pitch to give the 6,000 thousand strong crowd a glimpse of the trophy. Afterwards outside the players boarded an open top bus which paraded the Trophy down Manchester Road with hordes of reds following resulting in the road being closed for a while. The bus stopped at the Swan and Cemetry where the fans and players celebrated long into the night.
2 Rob Nugent
3 Tony Cullen
4 Steve Spencer
5 Dave Chadwick(captain)
6 David Brown
7 Josh Howard
8 Simon Carden
9 Phil Power
10 Steve Torpey
11 Rory Patterson
Subs:
12 Will Ahern
14 Chris Simms
15 Adie Orr
Attendance 6023
Scorers