Buying Macclesfield FC while drunk saved me, my marriage and this club

They are the non-League team brought back from the dead by an owner who purchased the club on Rightmove during ‘a four-day bender’ and managed by Wayne Rooney’s younger brother.

On Saturday, the reborn Macclesfield FC will celebrate the biggest day in their brief but extraordinary history when FA Cup holders Crystal Palace come to town in the tie of the third round.

Daily Mail Sport was given exclusive access to the National League North club ahead of Oliver Glasner’s side arriving to play on an astroturf pitch at the Leasing.com Stadium.

Safe to say it has been transformed from the wasteland Rob Smethurst discovered once he sobered up enough to realise what he had done back in October 2020. The club formerly known as Macclesfield Town had been wound up in the High Court a month earlier with debts of £500,000, and kicked out of the National League.

‘I’m thinking, “What the f***? What have I bought?”’ Smethurst recalls as he guides us around the smart new interior. ‘I mean, the place had fallen apart. The receivers had been in and it was as derelict as it could possibly be. The seats were broken, the glasses were smashed, the pitch was non-existent, weeds, cracked tarmac…’

Viewers of the BBC documentary Making Macclesfield FC, which followed Smethurst and his close friend Robbie Savage building a club from the ground up in the space of nine months, will be familiar with the image of the 48-year-old stumbling through the carnage with a huge set of keys, one for each door.

It was the beginning of a mission that Smethurst believes rescued him from addiction.

Having made his millions through a car logistics app, his life was drifting after Covid forced him to sell a football academy business.

‘I was just drinking crazy amounts of alcohol really, and living a completely ridiculous lifestyle,’ he admits. ‘I’d go to the pub at two o’clock in the afternoon and always be the last person to leave.

‘I’d been on this session, a four-day rolling bender. It was just non-stop. You know, wake up, carry on, which was crazy.

‘My mate said, “Macc football club’s up for sale”. I went on Rightmove and bought it within 24 hours. I didn’t have a business plan, and absolutely no idea how to run a football club. It was just something to do when you’re p****d.’

A decision made in a drunken stupour had a profound effect on Smethurst. It gave him a sense of purpose and community among a fanbase grateful that he brought their club back from oblivion. It did the same for him.

‘Has it saved my life? Yeah, it has,’ he says. ‘It’s taken over. It gave me something other to do than going back to sitting in the bedroom watching Netflix. I’ve got to fight for this club.

‘Once you get into it, the love, the passion, there is a togetherness within football that goes beyond. It’s become the heartbeat of Macclesfield. I walk across the pitch and I get a standing ovation from 4,000 people. I can’t go into town without being inundated with people coming over and talking to you. I love that.’

If buying the club saved his life, it almost cost Smethurst his marriage. He was still in the dog house over the four-day bender when he asked his wife to meet him at the football club.

‘I told her to just Google it and she’d find me. I was already in the bad books and she asked me what we were doing there. I said “I’ve bought the place!” That was the final straw. We split up for a good six or seven months.’

Smethurst has patched up his marriage and been sober for five years. The club is in rude health too. Having quickly realised the folly of relying on a matchday income from home games every other week, he built Macclesfield’s business plan on a public leisure club and stylish bar facilities that can be hired out, just like the astroturf pitch.

It has cost him £4million of his own money to renovate the stadium, and up to £400,000 a year to keep the business afloat. But a club that evolved from nothing to 38 teams, an academy catering for 800 kids, and an international programme now brings in around £2.5m-a-year.

Drawing on the wealthy areas surrounding this Cheshire market town, where high net worth individuals live side by side with some of the country’s most famous footballers including Rooney, Smethurst has brought in investors and is on the lookout for more.

It has helped Macclesfield rise from the ninth tier of English football in the North-West Counties Premier Division to where they are now, two rungs below the Football League, after three promotions in four years. Last season, they won the Northern Premier League with a record 109 points under Savage after he moved from his role as director of football to take charge of the team.

‘In all honesty, we’ve kind of bought the football leagues. No matter what we say, the reality is we have,’ says Smethurst, who announced he was stepping down in October but couldn’t let go because he’s a ‘control freak’.

‘I can understand why other clubs hated us for it because we weren’t on the same playing field. It’s only now that we’re starting to see that we’ve levelled out.’

The income from the Palace cup tie will be a massive help too. It will generate around £350,000 due in no small measure to the Premier League club’s willingness to waive their right to half the ticket proceeds from a 5,300 full house on Saturday.

When Macclesfield put the final allocation of 800 tickets up for sale last week, fans queued outside the stadium for up to six hours.

The cup windfall includes £120,000 from the BBC for live TV coverage that will see Rooney appear as a pundit.

‘Hopefully he’s not slating me,’ says Wayne’s brother John, who will be in charge of the non-League side against the cup holders. ‘He’s been on holiday and gets home the night before, so he’s on the game.

‘To have a brother like that and someone to look up to is only going to benefit me if I need advice. We were talking about the Palace game on the phone the other day. But he’s managed in the Championship and MLS. No disrespect, we’ve got to go to teams like Alfreton.

‘I know what people say: “Do you get frustrated with being Wayne’s brother all the time?” It probably was a little bit hard sometimes, but I’m used to it now. You always get judged on it and I have been since I started playing at a young age. You know, it’s always “Wayne Rooney’s brother this, Wayne Rooney’s brother that”.

‘I’m proud of what he’s done. He’s been one of the best players ever to play the game, but I’m my own person and I’ll manage the way I want to manage. It’s not always the great players that make great managers.’

Five years younger than Wayne at the age of 35, John grew up with the former Manchester United and England captain and their middle brother Graham playing football outside – and often inside – the family home in Croxteth.

‘Just constantly football,’ he recalls. ‘We’d make a ball out of anything, even if it was a pair of socks in the living room. TVs, pictures, everything got broken. We put a ball through the front window.

‘We’d be on the street playing, using lampposts as goals. We had a nursery across from us, and used to climb over and play in there.

‘My uncle has had his own boxing gym for 40-odd years now, and we’d throw the gloves on and fight with each other. Wayne’s the oldest so we’d make me and Graham fight. He had to take it easy on me, otherwise if he ended up giving me a smack then Wayne would give him one too. But that’s brothers.’

Rooney, who came through Everton’s academy before starting his career at Macclesfield as a teenager, rejoined the club in 2023 as a midfielder and moved into the dugout when Savage left for Forest Green Rovers in July. He has already been kicked out of the players’ WhatsApp group.

The rookie manager brought in Franny Jeffers as his No 2 to lean on the former Everton and Arsenal striker’s experience. ‘Fran’s been my best signing,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want someone who’s just going to be a yes man.’

There are some things you simply can’t prepare for, however. Macclesfield’s 21-year-old forward Ethan McLeod tragically died in a car crash on the M1 before Christmas, as he travelled back from a game at Bedford Town.

The club have retired the No 20 shirt worn by the Wolves academy graduate, who had scored three times in seven appearances since joining in July on a trial basis, and paid an emotional tribute to him before the Boxing Day game against Buxton.

‘We’ll never get over it,’ says Rooney. ‘For a young lad at that age to lose his life in those circumstances, it’s been horrendous for us all.’

The message above the home dressing room door as the players head out on to the pitch reads ‘Against All Odds’, and it feels highly appropriate as Macclesfield attempt to topple Palace with the help of the astroturf pitch which may present problems for the holders.

It would be the happy ending that was missing from the BBC documentary about the club. In the awkward final scenes, Smethurst visits Savage at Forest Green to discuss his sudden exit, swiftly followed by three of Macclesfield’s best players. A framed BBC promo picture of the two of them still hangs on the office wall.

Smethurst chooses his words carefully: ‘What hurt me at the time was the speed of it. I thought we were in this together, and it was just one big disappointment.

‘We move on now. I’ve got to look after the interests of Macclesfield FC.’