At Last, Joy for Club Familiar With Heartbreak

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/sports/soccer/20iht-soccer20.html

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LONDON — If ever something in sports could be a metaphor for life and for the human spirit, it would be called Bradford City A.F.C.

This is the team that falls, but never lies down. This is the community whose soccer club came through a tragic Saturday in 1985, when its main grandstand went up in flames, killing 56 fans and scarring 275 others.

This is the club that went through 14 managers in the last 14 seasons, falling to lower divisions all the while, facing bankruptcy twice and, for a while, existing in the lowest division of England’s 92-team professional pyramid.

On Saturday, some 25,000 Bradfordonians journeyed from West Yorkshire in the north to the national stadium at Wembley, in London. They filled more than half the audience with their century-old claret and amber colors, though the team played at Wembley in a strip of golden shirts. Nevertheless, Bradford beat Northampton Town, 3-0, to win promotion out of the basement division.

The goals all came in a 13-minute spell midway through the first half. James Hanson, a strapping young man who until very recently was stacking shelves at a local supermarket, headed in the opener. Rory McArdle, a rugged defender, popped up to nail the second goal. And Nahki Wells, the fastest man on the field by far, sprang forward to volley in the third.

In physical terms, Wells defines the nickname this Bradford team has carried for generations. They are the “Bantams”; he is a 5-foot-7, or 1.7-meter, bantamweight who started his career in his native Bermuda with the Dandy Town Hornets.

You could not make this up. A proud, historic old club fallen on repeated hard times, saved from extinction by a local man, Mark Lawn, who was a supporter all his life and who put up his own money to pay off the bank debts.

Just about the only time that Lawn, and all around him, did not sway from abject nervousness to animated elation Saturday was during one of the most evocative moments ever seen at Wembley Stadium.

It had nothing to do with what was happening down on the field. It was the 56th minute of the game — the minute when every Bradfordonian in the building stood and applauded the memory of the 56 who died at the Valley Parade Stadium fire in 1985.

Those victims, never forgotten, were both young and old, ranging in age from 11 to 86. The survivors included Aidy Boothroyd, who was in the stands when the inferno started, a 14-year-old supporter of Bradford there with his father.

Boothroyd is now the manager of Northampton Town, a team he had turned around from the very bottom of the division to one that was battling his boyhood club in a playoff match for the right to get promoted.

Where does fate begin and end in this story? Boothroyd builds teams around high motivation. He goes to almost Churchillian lengths to convince players that the 90 minutes ahead of them are the most important of their lives — and Saturday was their day to grasp promotion for their own thousands of fans.

One of the things Boothroyd said was that Wembley represented the purpose and the pinnacle of “20,000 hours” of hope, planning and preparation.

“It wasn’t about nerves,” he said afterward. “But in that first half-hour, I didn’t recognize some of my players.” He alluded to the fact that Bradford had been to Wembley once before, just three months ago, when it lost the League Cup final, 5-0, against Swansea City, a team three divisions above it. “I thought Bradford’s experience here against Swansea might have worked against them,” Boothroyd said. “But it worked for them instead. They dealt with the whole day, the occasion and the game, better than we did.” Boothroyd should know, as a Bradfordonian himself, that the Bantams do not lie down.

That club has not only come through the fire; it has forged a closer bond to the community, and in particular with the Burns Research Unit at Bradford University. Every May, year after year, the Bradford City team and its supporters raise money for the unit.

Twenty-eight years ago, the plastic surgeon David Sharpe was called in to help cope with 275 casualties, many of them critically burned. Since that day, with help that poured in from around the world, the burn unit led by Sharpe has become a center for pioneering research into wound healing, scarring and skin biology.

So for reasons more than just sports, this club cannot be allowed to perish.

“Getting this club back to where it deserves to be is very important,” the team’s current manager, Phil Parkinson, said Saturday. “In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been at the Bradford Memorial service, and what the supporters have said to me is that we’ve brought the spirit back into the city with this team, with our commitment and our never-say-die attitude.”

A young up-and-coming coach, Parkinson stayed with the team when offers came in from higher-place clubs after Bradford knocked out Wigan Athletic, Arsenal and Aston Villa during its League Cup run last winter. Bradford’s entire squad cost just £7,500, or $11,500, to piece together, and it got the better of three Premiership sides in home-and-away Cup competition.

That effort, however, stretched the resources of a small squad of players who then had to play catch-up in their own league. The team was at one stage 12 points behind in the race to the promotion places. It ended up seventh in the division, good enough to get in a playoff with four other clubs for the final promotion spot. It came from behind to beat the team that finished fourth, Burton Albion, then outplayed the sixth-place team, Northampton.

Three things made that happen. One was the evident fact that the Bantams can play a higher-quality game than their status suggests.

Then there was a collective indomitability of the players.

Last, and a long way from being least, is the feeling that these relatively unsung players get wherever they go in the city: Their game really matters.