Alan Buckley was born on 20 April 1951 in Mansfield.
He signed for Nottingham Forest on leaving school in 1966. Although he played just eighteen times for the first team, scoring one goal, he learnt a great deal playing and training alongside Forest’s Division 1 forwards.
Division 3 Walsall signed Alan in 1973. A quick forward with good dribbling skills and an accurate shot, he soon proved himself. Walsall spent most of the next five seasons in the top half of Division 3 and caused an FA Cup upset in 1975 when Alan scored in a victory over Manchester United. In total Alan scored 125 goals in 241 appearances before signing for Birmingham City in October 1978.
He scored eight goals in 28 matches for Birmingham in Division 1 (now the FA Premier League), but Birmingham were relegated and the following June Alan was re-signed by Walsall as their player-manager for a club-record £175,000.
Walsall too had been relegated in Alan’s absence, but Alan led them to runners-up spot in Division 4 and promotion back to Division 3 at the first attempt. Narrowly avoiding relegation in the next two seasons, Alan established Walsall in the top half of Division 3 over the next few seasons.
In 1983-84 Alan led Walsall to the semi-final of the League Cup. The run included a 2-1 win away to Arsenal and a place in the final looked possible when Walsall drew the first leg of the semi-final 2-2 at Liverpool, only to lose the second leg at home 2-0
In August 1986, he was surprisingly sacked by new owners of the club who wanted to bring in their own management team.
Alan’s playing career of 465 matches in which he scored 183 goals had ended in 1984. He moved into non-league football, briefly playing for Stourbridge and Tamworth and managing Kettering Town. Kettering won the GMAC Trophy, the knockout cup for Conference teams, in his time there. Then, in 1988 Grimsby Town offered him the manager’s position.
In the previous two seasons Grimsby had been relegated from Division 2 to Division 4. Football itself was not very popular. With crowd violence and ground disasters at Heysel Stadium and Bradford City in 1985, crowds were down everywhere. This was a dangerous time for any club to slide down the divisions and Grimsby were in grave danger of going out of existence.
Alan spent 1988-89 re-building the team with cheap and free signings from the lower divisions and non-league. As the team settled to play neat, passing football the FA Cup provided clear signs of improvement. Grimsby reached the fifth round with three victories over teams from higher divisions, including a 2-1 win at first division Middlesbrough.
Adding former England international centre forward Garry Birtles to his squad, Alan launched Grimsby on a successful promotion campaign by finishing second in Division 4 in 1989-90.
The sale of Andy Tillson to QPR for a club-record £500,000 only 17 months after Grimsby had signed him for nothing kept the bank balance healthy and did not affect the team’s form. Finishing third in Division 3, Grimsby were promoted again in 1990-91.
As Dave Wherry writes in The Grimsby Town Story:
‘Buckley had achieved the unimaginable feat of a swift return to Division Two against all the odds, and with a club record 83 points.’
Back in Division 2, Alan made several shrewd signings, including forward Clive Mendonca, midfielder Paul Groves and defender Paul Futcher, building a team that stayed safely in mid-table for the next three seasons. Then, in October 1994, West Bromwich Albion, a bigger club in the same Division as Grimsby, but struggling against relegation, offered him the manager’s job.
To the dismay of the Grimsby fans, Alan accepted, took his coaches with him and soon signed Grimsby Town players, Tony Rees and Paul Agnew. Alan kept West Brom up, but during the next couple of seasons did not mount the promotion challenge expected of him, and he left in January 1997.
Alan was soon back in football. In May 1997 Grimsby Town were relegated to Division 2 and re-appointed Alan as manager. Once again, his task was to stop the slide and win promotion. Good signings were made – Paul Groves and Kevin Donovan from West Brom, Wayne Burnett from Huddersfield and Lee Nogan from Reading – and youngsters such as Jack Lester, Danny Butterfield and Daryl Clare made excellent progress under Alan’s coaching staff. The 1997-98 season was to be one of Grimsby’s most memorable.
The club made its first appearance at Wembley, beating Bournemouth 2-1 to win the Auto-Windscreens Shield, Burnett scoring the winner. Finishing third in Division 2, they qualified for the play-offs and, six weeks after their first appearance, were back at Wembley again in the play-off final. Northampton Town were beaten by a Donovan goal and Grimsby were back in Division 1.
Alan kept Grimsby comfortably above the Division 1 relegation zone for the next two seasons, but was surprisingly sacked after just two matches of the 2000-01 season.
The next couple of years saw Alan manage Lincoln City and Rochdale where he successfully avoided relegation from the Football League at clubs with little money to spend.
Alan spent three years out of football from 2003, but in November 2006 he answered another SOS call from Grimsby Town. Relegated in 2002-03 and again in 2003-04, Grimsby were now in the bottom division and faced the prospect of relegation from the Football League.
In the next two seasons Grimsby finished in mid-table and enjoyed another trip to Wembley in 2008, although they lost the Johnstone Paints Trophy final 2-0 to MK Dons.
The season ended badly with eight consecutive defeats, and when two draws and four defeats left Grimsby bottom after six matches in 2008-09, Alan was once again sacked. The club was relegated out of the Football League in 2010 and, writing in 2011, remains a Conference club.
Football runs in Alan’s family. His brother Steve was a right back who played over 300 matches for Derby County and over 100 for Luton Town. His elder son Adam played in midfield for both Grimsby Town and Lincoln City, and his younger son Adam also played briefly for Grimsby.
Alan is one of only fourteen managers to have managed teams in over 1000 matches in English league football and the only one never to manage a team in the top division.
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Memory added on November 17, 2013
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