Tuesday 13 October 2015 16:10, UK
From fending off Premier League clubs to catching the eye of Sir Bobby Charlton, Sky Sports News HQ reporter James Cooper hears how a husband-and-wife team are overseeing an academy revolution at Bury.
Bury are a football club trying to change perceptions on and off the pitch.
Their owner wants Championship football within the next three years and, after promotion from League Two, they've found life in League One to their liking with six wins and four draws from their first 11 games. Add an unbeaten away run stretching back some 17 matches and they're certainly making an impact.
But it's not just at first-team level that Bury are in the midst of change.
The club has gone through a transformation from top to bottom, aided by their relocation to the Carrington training ground where Manchester City masterminded their first Premier League title win, and a husband-and-wife team who are overseeing a revolution at the club's academy.
Ian Kendall arrived at Bury as a director two years ago after four decades working in health and leisure. Twelve months later he invited his wife, Helen, to apply for the job of Head of Education and Welfare from U9 to U18 levels after she retired from her role as vice-principal of a girls' sixth form college.
The couple got married earlier in the year but as we sat together at the heart of the club, Ian confessed that life together at Bury has become all-consuming.
Commitment
"The fans just see that little bit for ninety minutes on the pitch on a Saturday but to get there there's a massive development programme that starts with scouting youngsters from the age of four upwards," he says.
"We've been on quite a journey to make sure we're searching around the locality, in Bury and Bolton and Burnley, to try and find youngsters who fancy an opportunity and a career in professional football. The commitment involves training three nights a week plus Saturday training and matches on Sunday so it's not something for the faint-hearted."
As well as liaising with schools and parents, Helen's role with Bury's youngsters also involves cooking, baking and shopping. She's found she has to be available to mums, dads and players at any time of the night or day. The eight teenagers currently in digs have become part of the her extended family; a family within a family.
"The philosophy goes right down from the first team to the U9s," she says.
"What I think is most exciting about this club, with the youth and with the academy, is that the first team and the management side of the first team are also very interested in the youth and the academy players.
"There's that level of integration. In a lot of clubs they're separate and but here the word 'family' is a good word to use because everybody, right down to Rosie in the laundry, is part of it. That's what's unique."
'High-profile'
Results are the clearest indicator of progress.
Bury's U18s won the North West Academy 3 League, while the U16s reached last season's national finals - accomplishments of which Ian speaks with pride.
"We've had lots of success and our academy teams are going out there and we're not just competing with the Category 3 level, we're pushing ourselves into Category 1," he says.
"We're playing the likes of Liverpool, Newcastle, Sunderland and West Brom to make sure that we've got a yardstick of development for our kids. It's really important to us and for our coaches to see what's out there and what other people are doing."
People in the game are starting to take notice. Some high-profile additions have been made to their latest crop of youngsters - going all the way down to eight years of age - while some recognisable faces have come through the doors at Carrington.
"We've had Premier League players now starting to bring their children to Bury - especially now we're at Carrington," Ian says, without naming names.
"We've had people from Premier League teams bringing their children here and seeing how the culture's changing, like when we played at Old Trafford last year."
It's that game against Manchester United's youngsters that starts Helen chuckling as she recalls another special moment.
"We went to Old Trafford with the youth boys, playing Manchester United in a round of the FA Youth Cup, and we were invited into the boardroom and Sir Bobby Charlton was there," she says.
"At half-time Ian went into the gents and Sir Bobby was also in there. Sir Bobby turned to Ian and said: "Your boys can play a bit can't they?" And to me that epitomises everything about Bury Football Club when somebody of that calibre makes that sort of a comment. I just think, 'we're on the right road here'."
Scouting network
That road has been a challenging one in the environment Bury now find themselves, hunting for youngsters and up against a host of Premier League and Championship clubs in the north west. The odds might seem stacked against them but Ian maintains that those pressures have forced the club to do things differently.
"The scouting network with the Premier League clubs is quite strong," he says.
"I mean we hear rumours that one of the Premier League teams in the north-west has 47 scouts in Greater Manchester; we can't compete with that and we've taken a different strategy and a different tactic.
"We've had 30 schools in being coached by FC Porto coaches this week, we've struck up a relationship now with all those PE teachers so that if those PE teachers have got any lads with any skills that they've identified at that level, they can say to us: "We've got somebody here who we think you might be interested in looking at'. So we might invite them into our U12s or U13s squad and do it that way."
Bury's stunning training headquarters have taken their staff and players some 10 miles away from Gigg Lane, but the club are hoping that by establishing a shadow squad of youngsters based in Bury they can maintain close links with the town that's been their home since 1885.
Plans are also afoot to establish a boot camp to improve youngsters' fitness with several of the Shakers' first team squad now actively involved in academy coaching too.
Dreams
If there have been plenty of highs so far, the overwhelming low is very evident when you ask Helen about their darkest day in football so far, that was the day her husband had to tell some of Bury's youngsters that their time at the club was over.
"When Ian did this last year he came home and he said: 'I've had the worst day of my life because I've just killed some young boys' dreams," she says.
That experience has left its mark on Ian, too.
"When you're saying to a lad whose dream is to play professional football and at that time you're in division two and the manager says: 'You don't really fit into my plans, you need to go somewhere else.' ... I've been in business a long time, for 40 years, and I've sacked people and I've been in some really difficult situations, but I was gutted, absolutely gutted for those kids," Ian adds.
"But out of that comes a bright light because coming to Carrington one of the things were doing now is we're now acting as a base for collegiate sports trials. We've recently had around 50 lads here from around the north west and the north of England, who were having trials with American colleges to see if they can go to America.
"For me that's got two bonuses: one we're looking after those kids and giving them a second chance but we're also seeing them on our site and having a chance to to see if there's anyone who's escaped who we think is worth keeping at Bury".
If there's a cloud to the silver lining of Bury's success, it's the interest being shown in their young players from bigger clubs further up the football food-chain.
"That does cause me some anxiety sometimes that within the academy system clubs can hoover up by reputation," he says.
"They can hoover up your better players and they've got a bigger budget and they can turn parents' heads and say: 'Come and play for me, I'm in the Championship or I'm in the Premier League'. So the little clubs are always scratching round at the bottom to try and find one jewel in the crown that will help them.
"The frustrating bit, and the bit that always gets me going, is that the bigger clubs can come in and take them away for a small set fee, and you lose that income out of the club and it goes out of the lower reaches football which is detrimental to the national game."
'Formidable force'
While paying tribute to academy coaches Mark Litherland and Ryan Kidd and the team they work alongside, both Helen and Ian believe that Bury remains a work in progress. When Stewart Day took over the club there had not been a home-grown player in the first team for six years.
Last year six academy products were given professional contracts and a clear blueprint has now been set for youngsters from 12 years of age all the way up to David Flitcroft's League One squad.
So is the club still often referred to as 'little' Bury really changing perceptions and opinions? The last word goes to Helen.
"I definitely feel that we're doing that, but on top of that it's definitely the football and the education with our parents knowing that their young son is being looked after when they come to Bury Football Club," she says.
"They're in good safe hands. We go to bed talking about football and we wake up talking about football; it's all-consuming, it's very testing at times but we wouldn't want it any other way.
"I also think the club enjoys us being a Mr and Mrs. Some of them play us off against each other but we're quite a formidable force together."
