The Bulls will be Pesky again

It seemed as though the Prescot Cables we knew and loved was gone. But the Pesky Bulls are not finished yet.

Prescot Cables players celebrate Saturday's 4-2 win over Trafford [Image credit: Stan Kos]

It came from a corner. Southport had conceded the corner easily, perhaps feeling the pressure of successive waves of Prescot Cables attack. The score though was still deadlocked at 0-0.

The ball arced into the six-yard box, only to be headed clear. But not far enough. A long ball back into the area caught the Southport defence unawares as Joey Herbert weaved into the perfect position.

It was knocked down for him, he cushioned it with his chest, and slotted it past the keeper with his left foot. Pandemonium ensued.

Most of the 900 fans inside Hope Street that night burst into celebration. The young fans behind the goal rushed forward, only for the fence they were leaning on to give way – stewards had to push it back into place before the game could continue. Cables led 1-0.

Prescot had made reaching the final look easy: Ashton Town were dispatched 9-0, AFC Liverpool 4-0, and Bootle 5-1. But I for one didn’t give them a chance against Southport. This was a National League side whose cup final line-up was full of first-team players. Yet Southport were played off the park – I don’t even remember them looking like scoring.

Mid-way through the second half Andy Scarisbrick doubled the lead, and Prescot Cables were the 2016/17 Liverpool Senior Cup winners – Senior Cup winners for the first ever time.

The Cables family

I first started watching Prescot Cables along with my dad in 2010. It was his idea to find a local football club to support after he moved from Runcorn to Huyton.

In those days attendances seemed to hover at around 150-180 – perhaps 210 for a big game (compare, an average of 504 so far this season). I remember once a two-figure attendance for a mid-week cup match.

In those early days watching Prescot was just an afternoon out. I didn’t appreciate that the club was in severe difficulties – in October 2011 Cables were forced to revert to amateur status simply to survive. Somehow, owing to the sheer commitment of players, coaches and volunteers, Prescot managed to stave off relegation to the North West Counties League in the seasons that followed.

Watching Cables beat Chasetown 6-1 thanks to a Josh Klein-Davies hat-trick, September 2018 

Over time my interest in Prescot Cables expanded until the club became a major part of my life. The same happened for dad who seldom if ever missed a game home or away – a week before the Southport game he was presented with the Supporter of the Year award.

In large part this was because of the people we met and the friends we made. There are too many to begin listing names – some are sadly no longer with us – but the supporters of Prescot Cables are a warm and welcoming community, who even since my move south have made me feel like part of a family.

It was in 2016/17 that Prescot transitioned from being a club whose sole focus was survival. Cables played some beautiful football at the end of that season, and the following season was probably the club’s best in recent memory with a second Senior Cup win at Marine, a fifth-place league finish, and a run to the promotion play-off (sadly, a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Bamber Bridge).  

The Pesky Bulls were now a force to be reckoned with.

The strange death of Prescot Cables

Like so many other sports clubs Prescot struggled with the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent loss of revenue. It was a mark of the club’s dedicated supporters that in September 2020 more than £10,000 was raised to keep the club going through lockdown.

The Bulls only posted two wins and a draw from nine fixtures in the curtailed 2020/21 season, though a highlight was the solid performance away at Darlington in the FA Cup in which the National League North side required penalties to make it through.

Expectations then for this season were probably not sky high – but few could have expected the total implosion that took place.

Matty Hamilton and James Edgar left before the season even started. Craig Davis – presumably having fully lost the dressing room – was sacked before the end of September. Despite the change in management James McCulloch left the following day. Matt Roberts, the club chairman, went the following month. Lloyd Dean and MJ Monaghan followed suit in December.

Kirky lifts the Senior Cup after the 2-0 win over Southport [Image credit: David Fry]

The Cables were in crisis. This was worse than just a run of bad results (though there were plenty of those). It was as though the very soul of Prescot Cables had shrivelled and died – yet contrary to nature the club’s reanimated corpse was somehow still uselessly fulfilling the fixture list.

The worst part for many of us was that we simply didn’t know and couldn’t understand what had happened. If certain Tweets were to be taken seriously, the club had been rotten to the core for some time – and furthermore we should all have realised it. Yet the club never seemed rotten, even in the days of 150 fans and a squad of amateurs, and certainly not since 2017.

Being all the way down here in Wiltshire didn’t help. If anything it made the situation more painful and magnified the sense of helplessness – the club like a family member suffering an inexorable and irreversible decline: helpless had I been there, even more helpless for being so far away.

Keeping the faith

On Saturday Prescot posted a hard-fought 4-2 win over Trafford, courtesy of goals from Jack Goodwin, Ian Kearney and brace from Kyle Sambor. The Cables have claimed 10 points from the last four games, and are within touching distance of safety.

Kyle Sambor celebrates his brace against Trafford in front of the Fence End [Image credit: Kevin Barrett Photography]

Credit for this turnaround goes in large part to manager Kevin Lynch. Appointed in October, progress under Lynch was not instant – results include a 6-0 thrashing at home to City of Liverpool and a 7-2 defeat at Warrington Rylands.

Yet since Christmas the Cables have been tougher, sterner and altogether more Pesky. The players brought in by Lynch have added a resilience that was completely lacking. There’s no way that the zombified club of autumn 2021 could have seen off Trafford, found a last-minute winner against Bootle, or ground out a 0-0 draw with title-chasing Workington.

It would be naïve to assume that all of Prescot’s problems are gone. But it was altogether wrong to think that the club’s soul had perished – it was only dormant for a time. The soul of Prescot Cables lives on, thanks to the Cables family who – even through gritted teeth and tears of frustration – kept the faith.

The threat of relegation has yet to be fully extinguished, but know this: the Bulls will be Pesky again.