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When Macclesfield FC players return to their day jobs on Monday, the part-time squad of PE teachers, podcasters and property developers will add one more title: giant-killers.
The Cheshire market town club pulled off the greatest shock in FA Cup history, knocking out the Premier League team Crystal Palace and becoming the first non-league opposition to beat the cupholders since 1909.
It capped a phoenix-like rise from oblivion barely five years after the 146-year-old Macclesfield Town FC was wound up, mothballed, and sold on the property website Rightmove.
Lifelong fan Richard Snape has been watching his beloved Silkmen since 1987. He was back at the 6,000-capacity Moss Rose Stadium on Sunday to buy two souvenir scarves and, perhaps, check he was not just dreaming.
“Last night I kept thinking I’m just going to wake up and it’s all a dream,” he said. “It’s unbelievable. I still haven’t got over it, to be honest. For quite a few days now, it will just be surreal.”
Bob Trafford, the club’s head of sponsorships, was also back at the stadium on Sunday, trying to piece together the night before. “It was another level,” he said. “I can’t remember it. The politically correct answer is: we celebrated.”
If the memory of Saturday is a little hazy, many Macclesfield fans recall one date clearly: 16 September 2020, the day their club was wound up by the high court with debts of more than £500,000.
“Very few people in the world genuinely know what it’s like to lose your football team – to properly lose it,” he said. In those dark days, even the prospect of playing Premier League opposition seemed improbable, let alone beating them. “The biggest thing is that we deserved to win the game: it wasn’t a smash and grab,” he said.
Indeed, Macclesfield, managed by Wayne Rooney’s brother John, had the better of Palace’s internationals from start to finish, epitomised by the heroics of their captain and first goalscorer, Paul Dawson, a former highway supervisor who now works for a friend’s candle business.
Last week, Dawson was shovelling snow from the pitch to make sure a match could go ahead. On Saturday afternoon he was being carried on the shoulders of delirious fans, his bloodied head bandaged after an injury a few minutes after kick-off.
“What we did will outlive us all,” said Trafford. “When we’re dead and gone, people will still reflect on that day. That’s the closest thing to immortality you will ever get. That’s the reward for all the hard work.”
Macclesfield’s triumph was all the more poignant as it came only weeks after the death of their 21-year-old forward, Ethan McLeod, in a car accident on the way back from a game in December.
McLeod’s parents were at the game on Saturday and congratulated the “very emotional” players and staff in the dressing room afterwards, said Rob Smethurst, the local businessman who rebuilt the club from scratch after buying it for £400,000 on Rightmove in the haze of a four-day bender.
The celebrations lasted long into the night, with many of Macclesfield’s jubilant players out until the early hours celebrating with fans.
“They were taking selfies with everyone, dancing, singing,” said Lorraine Chapman, 62, who developed a love for the club when she moved to the Cheshire market town from New Zealand. “Rob Smethurst knows our names, the players know our names. Before Christmas, there were nearly 2,000 kids out on the pitch – that’s what it’s all about. I don’t think you would get that at the big clubs.”
Over at the Bollington Brewing Company, where crowds watched the game on a big screen, the bartender Katie Thorp was not expecting a busy day on Sunday. “It’s crazy. I’m reading the news and we’re on the main page, scrolling on TikTok and seeing Macclesfield, Macclesfield, Macclesfield. It’s just buzzing,” she said. As if to prove the point, one lunchtime drinker showed a text from her son who had just read the BBC News homepage: “Iran, ICE, Macclesfield.”
Pubs were packed across the town. Even Crystal Palace fans joined in the celebrations. “I heard one walking down the high street singing: ‘We were shit, we were shit, we were shit,’” said Tom Broadhead, whose father was at the game on Saturday and compared the atmosphere to Live Aid rather than a football match.
Broadhead, 35, is incredibly proud of his home town. He designs and sells merchandise bearing the area’s name and heritage and on Sunday proudly showed off a Macclesfield FC jumper with a scarf embroidered across the front and two large crests on the back.
He hopes the FA Cup heroics will prove infectious and inspire confidence across the town: “It’s about the art of the possible. The fact that we can strive and achieve great things with a positive attitude, even in very adverse circumstances – that goes further than just the football club.”
