G.O.A.T. - Bury

Craig Anthony Madden was born on the 25th of September 1958 in Manchester and after playing for Northern Nomads began his professional career at Bury in 1977. Bury's then-manager Bobby Smith had been tipped off about a winger playing for itinerant Manchester side Northern Nomads but he had an off day while Madden, then an apprentice plasterer, scored. That earned him a trial in a reserves match at Coventry. Having scored, he thought it had gone well only for Smith to give him 'a rollicking' for not wearing a shirt and tie to the game. Craig recalls, " I didn’t have a clue – I turned up in a t-shirt, But I started to get a few more chances and when Bob Stokoe, the former Sunderland manager, took over I was offered a contract on £35 a week – a pay cut!" This was because the diminutive, nippy striker gave up plastering when he signed for Bury. He went on to be the club's all-time record goalscorer and who, for many fans, defines events at Gigg Lane in the 1980s. 

He spent nine years at Gigg Lane, making almost 300 league appearances and scoring 129 goals.
As Bury's all-time record goal scorer, he terrorised Division Four defences mercilessly in 1981-82 and his 35 league goals still stands as the highest tally a Bury player has bagged in a season. Again he recalls, " They were very happy times. We would get changed for training at Gigg Lane and then run half a mile to Lower Gigg, which had just one grass pitch, for training. We got promoted from Division Four in 1985 but we didn't have any money even then and I remember the manager Martin Dobson telling me one Thursday that the club had sold me to West Brom."

He was voted Bury's all-time cult hero by Football Focus viewers and won with 63% of the vote, ahead of fellow Bury favourites David Adekola and Greg Farrell. 

One comment made by a Bury fan voting for him said, "Madden.... simply the best. A bit like Van Nistelrooy, always there in the box to fire home the winner. 35 goals one season. He was always there to slam them in to the watching Manny Road end, usually in the last few minutes."
After spells with West Brom, Blackpool and York he moved to non-league Fleetwood Town where he found his scoring touch again and continued to enjoy the game.

 

In 2001, he moved into management and  became caretaker manager of Stockport County. Then in June 2010 he was appointed assistant manager at newly promoted Fleetwood Town alongside Micky Mellon. Following Micky Mellon's departure in December 2012 he became youth team manager.