Money can't buy Bury's pride and integrity

Waking up to read that the Scottish giants were plotting to take over the Shakers fixtures in League One and play their home games at Ibrox had me checking the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1.

To be frank, only a fool would give this tale the time of day.

The national media jumped on it with TV, radio and the written press swarming all over it. A slow news day indeed.

The Shakers were even trending on twitter. Inadvertently, little Bury found themselves in the middle of a news story involving one of the biggest club names in world football.

As to the credibility of the story. It’s about as much chance of happening as Alex Ferguson becoming the next manager of Manchester City.

You can only buy a club if that club is willing to sell, and Bury made it abundantly clear that won’t happen in an exceptionally clear statement which spoke of “pride”, “integrity” and “morality” and how no amount of money can buy that.

They assured fans their club would only have one guise in the future – it would be based in the town of Bury as Bury Football Club.

You can’t be clearer than that.

Such a plan, if it did exist, would be a disgrace to English football and the game in general.

If a big club ever did consider wiping a small club off the face of the earth – which would be the case here – the people responsible from all parties should be banned from football for life.

Bury are an old, historic, traditional club whose pride is such that it has one of the biggest ratios of away to home support anywhere.

It won the FA Cup twice at the start of the last century and still holds the record for the biggest FA Cup Final victory.

And people should not equate this situation to Wimbledon becoming MK Dons. The two are completely different in that Wimbledon did not have a home and were in administration when they moved.

It still took the FA two years to ratify that move. The red tape that would envelop Rangers buying Bury would be unbreakable.