WITH the 25th anniversary of Middlesbrough's liquidation and rebirth falling this week, plenty has been said and written about just how close the Teessiders came to extinction.

The padlocked gates at Ayresome Park, the training on public land, the dramatic first game back at Hartlepool's Victoria Ground, all have become iconic snapshots of a club teetering on the brink.

Steve Gibson has rightly been hailed as the architect of Middlesbrough's survival, with current manager Tony Mowbray receiving equal plaudits thanks to his role as the skipper of the side that took Boro back into the Second Division and then on into the top-flight.

But it is worth remembering just how close Boro came to the abyss, and highlighting the role that was played by one man who probably means nothing to the club's younger supporters.

Be honest, how many of you have heard of Henry Moszkowicz? I'll hazard a guess it's not many. Yet had it not been for Moszkowicz, a London-based businessman and racehorse breeder, Middlesbrough would not exist as we know them today.

True, there might be an AFC Middlesbrough, desperately trying to reclaim a place in the foothills of the Football League, but for two-and-a-half decades, Teessiders would have grown up without a professional football team to follow.

The story starts in the summer of 1986. Boro were going bust, with their assets insufficient to cover the debts that had mounted under the watch of former chairman Alf Duffield.

With total debts amounting to almost £2m, a huge sum in those days, the club called in the liquidator, and the Inland Revenue issued a winding-up order in an attempt to reclaim the £115,156 they were owed.

The footballing authorities were growing tired of clubs reforming as new companies to renege on their debt payments, and FA chief executive Graham Kelly had made clear that liquidation, and a failure to fulfil an opening-day fixture against Port Vale, would mean Middlesbrough losing their membership of the Football League.

There was to be no second chance, and while Gibson had rallied to the cause, along with a group of other North-East businessmen that included representatives from ICI and Graham Fordy, then of Scottish & Newcastle, the council's failure to raise its proposed £200,000 investment looked like sounding the final death knell for the club.

Cue Moszkowicz's intervention. Having seen an advert in the Sunday Times requesting investment into a consortium looking to save Middlesbrough, the London-based businessman, who had amassed a considerable personal fortune from his stationery business, had already pledged to hand over some cash.

With the council unable to provide support though, Gibson needed more, and on the day before a critical Football League meeting on Friday, August 22, the current Boro chairman met Moszkowicz at Heathrow Airport and picked up an additional £300,000.

Ultimately, that money made the difference. In their meeting with the Football League, Fordy, Moszkowicz and Reg Corbridge, who was another employee of Scottish & Newcastle, were able to prove they could pay off all of the club's creditors and still retain £350,000 of working capital in the bank, a figure that had been presented as a minimum requirement.

But what made Moszkowicz, someone with no personal or family ties to the town of Middlesbrough, feel moved to invest so much of his own money into keeping the club alive?

The simple answer - he was a fan. For reasons he has never fully divulged, Moszkowicz, who was 44 at the time of the liquidation crisis, had spent much of the previous three decades sporadically travelling north to watch Middlesbrough.

As a member of the London branch of the Middlesbrough Supporters' Club, he would attend more than a dozen games a season, often with his wife. Previously, he had kept himself to himself. But in the club's hour of greatest need, he put his head above the parapet and helped ride to the rescue.

“I'd always been a fan and I contacted the provisional liquidator when I learned the club was in trouble,” said Moszkowicz at the time. “From there I got in touch with the local council, and after explaining the terms I wanted, we felt we could work together.”

Moszkowicz, who is no longer associated with the club in a formal capacity, joined Gibson, Fordy, Corbridge and Colin Henderson on the board of Middlesbrough Football & Athletic Company (1986) Ltd, the body that took the club forward from the dark days of the 1980s to the glitz and glamour of the subsequent two decades.

Quite rightly, Gibson is lauded for his role in securing the club's survival. This week, more than any other, though, it seems fair to acknowledge the key role played by another lifelong fan.