1986 remembered as Boro launch community project (From The Northern Echo)
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1986 remembered as Boro launch community project
8:00am Tuesday 23rd August 2011 in News By Chris Webber
PROJECT LAUNCH: Alastair Brownlee and Tony Mowbray at the launch of Middlesbrough 86 Project, enjoying their pies and Bovril outside the old Ayresome Park gates.
A NORTH-EAST football club used the anniversary of its last gasp rescue to launch a major community project.
Yesterday marked 25 years to the day since the most important statement in the history of Middlesbrough Football Club.
A lot has happened since the near financial meltdown of the club in 1986, but one man who helped Boro through those dark days is back at the helm.
Twenty-five years ago, Tony Mowbray was the tough, young Middlesbrough captain fighting for his career, his club and his community – yesterday he made an altogether less dramatic, but equally welcome announcement.
Mr Mowbray, now the club’s manager, launched the Middlesbrough 86 Project, an innovative programme of events planned this year to mark the time when the Boro came within minutes of closing forever before a consortium of businessmen came up with a deal to save the club.
He was speaking in front of the old Ayresome Park Gates, moved from the club’s former ground to the Riverside Stadium. It was those gates which were once locked with an industrial size padlock while the club struggled to deal with its massive debts.
Mr Mowbray welcomed a £42,900 Heritage Lottery Grant that will mark this year’s commemoration of the club’s unlikely survival with a play, interactive events, photo exhibition, fans’ memory banks and many other events.
The project will encourage the community to share their memories of 1986 through a series of events culminating in a play called The Boro’s 37 minutes. It will be performed in December, at Teesside University.
While fans and journalists mingled, drinking Bovril and traditional meat pies laid on by the club, Mr Mowbray remembered then manager Bruce Rioch and club saviour Steve Gibson.
He said: “I’ll never forget the times of 86 when a small group of people helped by the larger community saved this club.”
Listening to the manager was fan Rob Nichol, now editor of fanzine Fly to the Moon, who was then a young fan praying for the survival of the club. He said: “It sounds a bit stupid, but it was lifechanging experience for a lot of people when the club was saved.”
Boro fans are urged to visit the We are Open gallery in Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough, to share their memories of 1986.
Go to m86.org.uk to find out more about events.
