It’s 1979 and Sammy Rafferty is on the run. From the past. From the police. And, perhaps more importantly, from some rather unfriendly criminal types. He thinks his football dreams are over, but that might not be the case. He’s run to Burntbridge Lye. A place where dreams don’t always die. Burntbridge Boys is a horror story, a dark tale of football and the diabolical.

“It just goes to show, some popular phrases can be misleading. It’s not always a beautiful game, not down Bledbrooke Way. Sammy ‘the butcher’ Rafferty has long since kissed his playing days goodbye. Never kicking a competitive ball again was a hard pill to swallow and he’s not ready for his managerial career to come to an untimely end. The thought of forever being shut out of football makes his heart sink and feet itch.”

Burntbridge Boys · A Tale of Fouls and Fouler Things

Much as he might yearn to stay in the game, there isn’t any choice. The cards have been dealt and you have to play the hand you’re given. Sammy grits his teeth and gets on with it. Life settles into monotony and offers only boredom and frustration …until he comes across an old football ground nestled in the back of beyond.

He can almost hear the roar of the crowd as he parks at the gates of the deserted Burntbridge Palmers, a decaying stadium on the outskirts of Bledbrooke Town. The club that won’t die could be just the place for a man who still has a gleam in his eye. After all, they’re both ghosts that won’t go away.

Burntbridge Boys is about a lot of things. Horror, for sure. No doubt there. Old school, quiet horror, with a twist. A ghost story where the ghosts aren’t really dead. A fond reminiscence of football, back before football became completely commercialised. Yes, soccer definitely plays its part. Although, it has to be said, the beautiful game is sometimes less than beautiful in Burntbridge Boys. It can be somewhat ugly and disturbing. And often more than a game. There’s also a fair-sized chunk of deceit and double-dealing in this story.

On a more prosaic level, is there such a thing as a football horror story? Let alone one set in the past which wallows in a darkly imagined history of the game. Who knows? When the Dead Boxes are involved, anything is possible. Such items have always been scary things. Even in the swinging Sixties and glam-shock punk revolution of the Seventies, they contained a terrifying mix of horror and salvation. Throw the Scaeth Mythos into the mix and stuff gets decidedly multi-dimensional.

There are different realities and the walls which separate them can be paper thin. The tiniest tear can allow horror and madness to bleed through…