After 146 years a winding-up order means oblivion beckons for club that defied odds but was often a misstep from the brink
The announcement was shocking but registered as no surprise. Like the £500,000-plus the club owed its creditors, Macclesfield Town had been on borrowed time. After a long series of court dates and adjournments, Judge Sebastian Prentis, via a virtual hearing, wound up the club on Wednesday in a specialist insolvency and companies court.
It will be the fans who suffer. A Macclesfield Town supporter does not dream of the
Champions League or signing Gareth Bale on loan but it is the shared camaraderie of icy afternoons on the Star Lane End or a 500-mile round trip by coach to Torquay that will be lost. And in their own way, Silkmen fans followed a club with much to be proud of, as a powerhouse of the non-league scene in the late-1980s, a
Football League club against the odds after that and somewhere that gave three black managers in Sol Campbell, Paul Ince and Keith Alexander opportunities.