BfB

But it did happen…
Magnolia, 1999

When you thought that football has shown you everything it has to show you, your mind returns to the image of Antoni Sarcevic, the last minute of the last minute, Fleetwood Town at home and a ball finding its way to the lower corner of the goal. Writers should always try avoid cliché, reality does not.

Of all the moments in the history of the club, none have been so ready for memeification, nothing so ready to be spliced up and added to TikTok, and watched again and again, because it did happen. The memory, or the memory of the memory, drift over a boring Tuesday afternoon, reminding you it did happen. Sarcevic, and then Ryan Sparks, spend their summers on Podcasts recalling the moment and playing with the ramifications but, really, we are all in the glow created by the moment. All in the glow of it did happen.

Then you realise you’ve gone two days without thinking about it, so you watch it again, but it is four days next time, and you realise that people have lived and died watching football never seeing anything to rival Sarcevic 90+6, and you may never see anything like that again. You’ll never have your first kiss again, hold your child for the first time again, or have the best day of your life again.

And that is so sad, but it is also beautiful.

Probably

I have never really known how it happened, but twenty-one years ago, during the Second Administration at Bradford City in three years, I ended up along with one of the staff of the Administrators as he waited for a call from Ashley Ward.

We talked.

Ward, in the showers after training at Sheffield United, was to decide if he would defer payments owed to him, or not, and thus the attempts to save the club would have failed. On the other side of a telephone, one footballer held the Sword of Damocles over an entire club.

It would be more narratively satisfying if this was around an old wired into the wall telephone, but it was not. We watched the mobile, and the mobile did not ring, and whomever that member of staff was he told me that should Ward agree to the deal City would be uniquely placed in the second tier that year as one of the few clubs without a substantial, crippling debt. Most football teams operated on a structure of debts, he told me, as if it were obvious to someone who enjoyed watching men hoof a bit of leather about.

The possibilities of were hanging in the air, probably, when the phone rang.

Smallwood

Richie Smallwood leaves Bradford City at the end of his contract, having previously been told that he would be staying. It is a bold gambit by Graham Alexander who believes that the outgoing captain can be replaced by a single player, and that player is Max Power.

One does not need an especially long memory to recall City without Smallwood at the end of last season. The defence that seemed allergic to conceding goals broke out in a fever of concessions. The certainty of promotion became the question, and so much of what worked last season came down to Smallwood.

Given the criticism the man received why enjoying this finest hour one could imagine him hoisting two fingers on the way out when we offer him a deal, not the other way around.

The glow of promotion, the memory that it did happen, blurs focus on the moment but as Alexander drove to the North East to tell Smallwood he would not be able to sign the contract offered, he may have defined his future at the Bradford City.

Thin

A Thursday night in the summer and Bradford City are launching a new shirt. New signing Stephen Humphrys, and old Master Andy Cook, show it off. It is technically a claret and amber striped shirt and the tag line “through thick and thin” goes some way to selling the proposition, but no one is fooled. This is one of those seasons where City are not going to look like City.

Like all brand guideline propositions, a football shirt needs to respect the ratios which colours are used in and on the whole for something to look “City”, it needs to have around 40%-60% of the emphasis colour of both claret and amber. This new shirt is a pleasant affair, but does not feel City. The vibes are off.

Edin Rahic’s Fighting Kit, the year the history makers work yellow, the Derek Adams white shirts. The curveball into the collection of first team shirts is a pattern, but a pattern which might be about to come to an end, and from the most unlikely source. The Government of Sir Keir Starmer.

Toolmaker

The Football Governance Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons, sponsored by Lisa Nandy’s Dept of Media, Culture and Sport, and as a piece of legislation it makes for interesting reading trying to – in its 100 odd pages – right any number of wrongs done on the whole by the people who own the business of football clubs to the people who follow the teams of football clubs.

There is an Independent Football Regulator, there are tests for ownership, and there is a system of licensing for the top five divisions of English Football which creates the club as an entity which requires the consent of the governed, which is to say fans, in order to change core elements like the name of the club, or the home stadium, or the colours of the home shirt, which it would seem City go to the line of on a semiregular basis.

The test of any regulator is the sternness of the enforcement, and it remains to be seen if 90% Claret 10% Amber is a breach. More significantly, The Football Governance Bill makes a statement which hitherto has gone unsaid in this country. That football – this thing we do – is at least in some way a British Culture to be protected in the way that Stonehenge or The Tower of London are.

Striker!

As players arrive, each seems to fit into a web of contacts centred around a group of people working for the club. Many have played for Wigan Athletic and City’s Director of Football David Sharpe. New arrivals Josh Neufville, Curtis Tilt, and Matthew Pennington confirm that the formation of three central defenders and two wing backs will carry on apace next year. Stephen Humphrys and Will Swan bring more of an indication as to how the Bantams might play.

With Andy Cook probably not available in earnest until the Winter neither Humphrys nor Swan represents a direct replacement and Calum Kavanagh’s usefulness in the role is as much about the position and its utility. The space Kavanagh opened up was the point, not the performance of Kavanagh himself.

Humphrys and Swan, and for that matter, Kavanagh and the other City attacking players, seem more suited to a three-person attack with no defined Number Nine. Humphrys cast as the League One Viktor Gyökeres providing muscle and pace while drifting from position seems the most likely to be the central player of the three, and these ideas linger in the mind until one remembers it did happen and thoughts drift away.

Governance

The gov.uk Factsheet on what the Independent Football Regulator will do is a tempered view of a future where the national game is embedded more fully into the national life. Financial sustainability regulations are much needed, as is regulation to make sure that club custodians are suitable. Indeed, if David Sharpe has a role at Bradford City it is knowing the good Wigan Athletic players forced out by the reprehensible Wigan Athletic owner, which this law hopes to make a thing of the past.

Amidst the regulation around ownership and the consultation with supporters is a prohibition on English clubs joining prohibited leagues that do not have the support of the fans and perhaps that suggests the difficulties in creating this legislation and the need for the Independent Football Regulator have teeth to bare. Will you, dear reader, be able to petition the Regulator?

Nevertheless, and thinking back to the Summer months twenty-one, and twenty-three years ago, there is finally a regulatory attempt to recognise the value of a club like Bradford City within the culture of the country, and state that that culture needs protecting from whomsoever can afford to invest in the club, regardless of their intentions.

That you might come to live in a world where you are not needed. Where the rattled buckets and fund-raising are forgotten, and unthinkable, and the summer is about signing players and talking about shirts but it did happen

Sparks

Ryan Sparks might be the perfect man for a Podcast. He gives off a characterful Northern charm and is able to talk in a matter of fact way about the business of football he is in, and the state of that business when he started. The Rise & Grind mindset of Podcasts adores Sparks and his stories. Success is glorious, defeats are recast as moments of learning, and gently erased from history. Was it a good idea to bring in Derek Adams? It was a teachable moment.

Yet between the Rise, and before the Grind, Sparks delivers. The scaling of the business of Bradford City is impressive and one wonders if Sparks inherits an unease. The people who have been in charge of the club have been largely untrustworthy. Sparks represents a different type of trust. He is the corporate world having arrived at Valley Parade to sweat assets and change the message. His truth is on the balance sheet. Without a doubt he is not a man without ego, but he expresses that by pointing to his successes, rather than putting success as a second thought behind that ego.

We are to enter a world where Bradford City are licensed by a Independent Football Regulator. Sparks’ Podcast comments on wage caps in the Rugby League Super League suggest he has views around sustainability which might not be healthy for clubs in the lower leagues of English football. If there is a world where Sparks has more limitations on him, and seeing his alacrity in circumnavigating such a world, there is a lot to look forward to.

FCUM

Alexander takes the players through their paces at FC United of Manchester. An on trial Yanic Wildschut scores for City and Tyreik Wright presses a case for being included in the ranks of the attacking midfielders rather than as a wing back. A week later, Lewis Richards signs a deal to keep him at the club, and a shape starts to emerge. The 32W22W, the 343, the No Number Nine.

Bradford lad and right back Tyler Magloire plays on trial. He is a relation of Joe Cooke, who was a City legend before my generation came along, and the names hear long ago. Another right back, Jack Hunt, features as he looks for a club and City look for options.

These are not the times to try men’s souls. They are summer musings, and they are the endless musings of minds with nothing much to animate themselves. Today is good, and there are steps being taken to fix yesterday, and the good times do not last forever.

And it did happen.