Making Macclesfield: The textured town of silk and the FA Trophy, on its way back

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

It seems like I’ve been here before

It seem like I’ve been here before

Everything’s Gone Green. New Order. 1981.

Macclesfield is a textured town. A mist hangs low in the hills behind. It’s both warm and cold in March.

The late Ian Curtis worked in the labour exchange there and may have felt the bewilderment of the place known for its silk, contrasted by a hardness.

It’s a town perfect for the manufacture of silk, with its River Bollin running through and providing water soft enough for the production of the fine material.

Before the mills, children worked the machines in rooms 35 yards long. They had to take the silk thread, run the length of the hall to hook it, before running back and were noted to cover 14 miles a day, barefoot.

The silk industry expanded and contracted, at one point employing over half the town’s population and powering 70 mills, all but gone now in a globalised market place.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Macclesfield.

There’s affluence in Macclesfield and poverty too and it’s up to the town’s football club to welcome everyone.

Macclesfield’s football team have had their peaks and troughs too, with a journey from the 20’s Cheshire League to the Second Division of the Football League by the late 90’s, before a financial implosion that saw what was known as Macclesfield Town dissolved in 2020 and replaced by Macclesfield FC.

A guy called Robert Smethurst took over and brought in Robbie Savage as Director Of Football to lend a hand to try and get the Silkmen back in a winning flow.

Today’s opponents are Coalville Town from Leicestershire, whose support contain a number who will remember Savage in his Filbert Street pomp.

At stake is a place in the FA Trophy Semi-Finals, a non-League competition which Macclesfield won in its inaugural year in 1970. They claimed it again in 1996 and have also come runners up on two occasions (1989 and 2017) so is something they attack with vigour.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Macclesfield FC.

A fan called Walter, whose support of Macclesfield, goes back to the Cheshire League days, says a culvert used to run under the pitch, meaning a high water table and a pitch liable to be waterlogged.

An artificial surface renders rain less of a problem now, and the earth banks behind the goal at the Star Lane End have been replaced by terracing.

The Star Inn behind, has been demolished, while the famous old Moss Rose pub is gone too, indicative of the societal changes that football in Macclesfield has been though. People still refer to the ground as the Moss Rose now although it known as the Leasing.Com Stadium for sponsorship purposes.

In place by 1891, Macclesfield built its relationship with its home ground before Liverpool did at Anfield and Everton, Goodison Park, signifying its place as an industrial centre which needed a sporting outlet on the weekend.

Outside the ground, a Macclesfield supporter enjoys a roll-up, wearing some lived-in Adidas Sambas, he probably played 5-a-side in them as well as traversing terraces all over the country on his club’s long way back to league football.

The swishness of Bar Twenty Seven inside, comes as quite a contrast, a room longer than those old silk production halls, with windows that run the length of the pitch. You can get a nice bottle of white wine in an ice bucket and watch the players take to the field and it would be easy to sneer with a reverse snobbery about pinot grigio taking over pints in modern football but it’s a happy place to be.

The owners had put money behind the bar for free drinks for fans and that doesn’t happen everywhere.

The staff serve you quick and the view is great through those giant panes of glass, the pies are really good and there is a thoughtfulness to the whole place which is notable.

In a Mirror column before the game, Savage talked about the processes that go into recruitment, even going so far as looking at potential signing’s social media accounts to ensure incoming players are “role models”, indicative of an ex-pro wanting to give something back to the sport and to the community.

Macclesfield have signed Tom Clare from the TV show Love Island, who Walter calls over for chat and is happy that players in blue make time for the supporters and aren’t in a rush to be elsewhere. Tom jokes that he kept his match-fitness for a return to football by running laps of the pool but he’s on the bench today with something to prove.

Starting at number 10 is John Rooney, brother of Wayne and although not possessing quite as much skill as his older brother, still has quite a lot.

Maybe the occasion got to Coalville a little or perhaps it was the Macclesfield pressing but the Silkmen went ahead after only five minutes when the away side’s Eliot Putman headed past his own keeper.

The moment summed up the occasion as a solid advertisement for non-League football. On the Star Lane End the terrace erupted and a man held his young son above his head like they’d won at Wembley.

A lady twirled her original Macclesfield scarf from the FA Trophy final in 1989, kept with care and meant for moments like this.

Meanwhile, in the open air away terrace, with the houses of Macclesfield behind, a Coalville fan stood at the front and rallied the travelling support, who didn’t stop singing, proud of their town of no-little industrial heritage, the clue being in the name.

Further goals came from well-placed shots from Rooney and Kane Drummond, both of whom look ready for higher level football, as do Macclesfield FC.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Coalville Town fans at Macclesfield FC.

The semi-finals of the FA Trophy await and potential opposition from Bromley, Gateshead, or Solihull Moors, all two tiers above Macclesfield says it all.

Getting to Wembley again just three years after being reborn would be a bewildering achievement.

It’s getting warm again but the temperatures are dropping, I want to take off my coat.