A fan’s guide – the club from early doors to today
The resurgence of Macclesfield has been one of brightest feel-good stories to emerge from the post-pandemic non-league scene. Not even the most passionate fan of the Silkmen could have envisaged how far Macclesfield FC have come since the collapse of the original Macclesfield Town in 2020.
After three promotions in four seasons, an FA Trophy semi-final and a run to the Third Round of the FA Cup in 2025-26, the phoenix club is, in theory at least, two campaigns away from an improbable return to The 92.
And if entry to the fifth-tier National League from its North division doesn’t happen, supporters can still look back on the visit of cup holders and recent European debutants Crystal Palace to their modest Moss Rose ground in January 2026 and wonder how it all happened.
However far they rise or fall, the Silkmen will do so without the two men who did most to revive them. Both formerly involved with Stockport Town, Rob Smethurst bought Macclesfield’s assets on a crazy whim shortly after their 2020 demise, and immediately brought in fiery former Leicester midfielder Robbie Savage to oversee the footballing operation. Though each would leave Moss Rose in 2025, they did so having put Macclesfield back on the map, leaving behind a new community of followers.
Many of the core support would remember the false dawn of the Silkmen returning to The 92 as 2018 National League champions. Macclesfield Town had spent six seasons out of the limelight before a 2-0 win at Eastleigh gave them an unassailable lead to clinch the divisional title.
Manager and former stalwart forward John Askey duly crowned a 25-year association with the club, after his leading role in two momentous Conference title wins back in the 1990s. In 1995, Macclesfield’s Moss Rose ground had been deemed unsuitable to stage Football League games, so the Silkmen went back and won the fifth division again two years later.
All this took place under revered manager, Sammy McIlory. The Northern Ireland World Cup star steered Macclesfield for most of the 1990s, bowing out to take the national team job after Town spent a single season in the third tier, playing the likes of Manchester City, Stoke and Fulham.
Mill town Macclesfield took up the game during the Victorian football boom. Matches were first played, by teams of soldiers and cricketers, in the 1870s before a Macclesfield FC were formed in 1876. Entering the early rounds of the FA Cup, Macclesfield moved to their current ground of Moss Rose in 1891 as members of The Combination, competing against Chester and Wrexham.
But while other clubs from Cheshire and North Wales gained accession to the Football League at some point between the wars, Macclesfield stuck to winning occasional silverware at district, regional and county level. In 1946, Macclesfield FC became Macclesfield Town.
A bigger change came in 1968. First came a memorable run in the FA Cup, Macclesfield beating local rivals Stockport 4-1 in a First Round replay before keeping top-flight Fulham to a 4-2 scoreline at Craven Cottage, home victory engineered by Bobby Robson in his managerial debut. Later that year, not only were The Silkmen selected as founder members of the Northern Premier League, they won the inaugural championship ahead of Wigan and Morecambe.
Taking the Northern Premier title again a year later, Macclesfield Town also won the first FA Trophy, going to Wembley to beat Telford 2-0. With the Northern Premier League and the FA Trophy firmly established, non-professional football in the region had now moved on from the days of county championships and senior cups.
With a young John Askey in the ranks, Macclesfield again won the Northern Premier in 1987 – but this time, it provided access to the Vauxhall Conference. This was also the same year that automatic promotion was introduced from this de facto fifth division to the Football League.
Stalled after 110 years or more of non-league football, Macclesfield brought in Sammy McIlory, who had recently gained managerial experience at nearby Northwich Victoria. The former Manchester United hero first led The Silkmen into the Second Round of the FA Cup, and a first modern-day derby with Crewe. His side compensated for the 2-1 defeat by winning the Conference League Cup.
A year later, it was the Conference title itself, Macclesfield romping home five points ahead of Woking. League status wasn’t to be however, due to the size of the Moss Rose ground – thus sparing Exeter City, in 92nd place in the League and on the ropes financially, an earlier disaster.
After winning the FA Trophy in 1996, beating McIlory’s former club Northwich Victoria, Macclesfield at last achieved full league status in 1997, after 120 years of football. Carrying on where they left off, McIlory men kept on winning, gaining automatic promotion in their first season in the league, without a single defeat at the Moss Rose.
It proved to be too much, too soon. Though by no means disgraced, Macclesfield were outclassed by the likes of Fulham and Manchester City, and finished bottom of the table. It proved to be the high-water mark in the club’s history, and the end of the McIlroy era.
Apart from a play-off under Brian Horton in 2005, Macclesfield settled in for 12 years of mid- to lower-table mediocrity in the fourth flight. Surviving despite long winless streaks, The Silkmen sank back to the Conference in 2012.
Missing out on promotion by one point in 2015, Macclesfield kept faith with manager John Askey, who had been brought in shortly after the drop out of the Football League. Despite continuing financial hardship during 2017-18, including missing salary payments over the winter, Askey managed to persuade Nathan Blissett, nephew of former Watford star Luther, to join the club on a loan deal. Returning to Macclesfield after a season at Wrexham, Iraqi Shwan Jalal proved the decisive factor, though, in the club’s successful campaign, rarely letting in more than one goal.
After the National League title was sealed in April, instead of following Macclesfield up to League Two, Jalal went over to Chesterfield, heading the other way down into the National. Askey, meanwhile, went to Shrewsbury, his surprise move after decades of loyalty no surprise considering the amount he was owed by the club’s Iraqi owner, Amar Alkadhi, said to be around the £175,000 mark.
The telecoms mogul still had the charm – and initially found the wherewithal – to persuade Sol Campbell to keep the bottom-placed club in the League in an arduous managerial debut for the former England star. Rising to the challenge against all the odds, Campbell kept the Silkmen winning and drawing, most notably holding Cambridge to 1-1 before a near-4,000 crowd at Moss Rose to maintain Macclesfield’s League status on the last day of the 2018-19 season.
For his trouble, owed a similar amount to Askey the year before, Campbell departed with his head held high. Both he and Elliott Durrell, journeyman scorer of that vital equaliser, duly petitioned for the club to be wound up due to unpaid wages. A farcical FA Cup tie with Kingstonian, boycotted by players and fans alike, saw Macclesfield take the field with an XI of youths and loanees.
Points deductions and the pandemic then pushed the situation to breaking point. Alkadhi stepped down and the club was wound up in September 2020, 146 years after locals from the 8th Cheshire Rifle Volunteers organised the first matches in Macclesfield.
Within a month, its assets had been taken over by the owner of Stockport Town, though it was anything but a rational business decision. By his own admission, successful entrepreneur Rob Smethurst had been on another four-day bender, during which a mate of his had pointed out a small ad for a non-league football club. Picking up the phone and pulling out his chequebook, Smethurst duly walked into a dilapidated Moss Rose and wondered what he had done the day before.
His first instinct was a good one. He called his mate Robbie Savage, who had joined Smethurst-run Stockport Town in 2019. Perhaps more out of concern for his friend’s welfare, the former Welsh international and TV pundit then part-shouldered the responsibility of re-creating a football club from next to nothing.
The next hire, along with builders and repairmen, was an equally solid one: Danny Whitaker, who had steered Macclesfield’s midfield in two successful spells, picking up Player Of The Year trophies, appearing in the FA Trophy final of 2017 and winning a National League medal the following year. His short-term though vital caretaker roles as manager in the choppy waters of 2019-20 had not gone unnoticed, either.
With these three at the helm, and Whitaker on the pitch, Macclesfield FC played their first match, against Burscough in the ninth-tier North West Counties League Premier Division, in July 2021. Savage’s savvy plan to fill the ground also worked, with many freebies among the capacity 2,018 packing out Moss Rose. The fact that there was football there at all was miraculous enough – the ground would later be expanded to its current size of 5,300.
As Smethurst counted off another successful day sober warming to his successful stewardship steering and shaping Macclesfield, and Savage faced touchline abuse at tiny grounds across Lancashire and beyond, the phoenix club romped to two straight divisional titles. With a budget and facilities far above the Workingtons and the Clitheroes, Macclesfield were building a new community of fans as blue shirts began to be seen around town once more.
The average home gate for the 2022-23 season was nearly 3,700, impressive for the National League, let alone the Northern Premier Division One West won by the Silkmen. While sales of merchandise soared, a smart sports bar would soon be installed at Moss Rose. This was more than just a scrap for league points.
After a hiccup in 2024, a play-off final defeat to Marine in front of 5,329 halting Macclesfield’s progress, Savage’s men slay all before them to win the Northern Premier League by 26 (!) points in 2025. Ex-Chester journeyman striker Danny Elliott hit almost a goal a game in the club’s runaway goals for tally of 109.
Just missing out on reaching the First Round proper of the FA Cup in 2023-24, Macclesfield also lost by the odd goal in three at National League mainstays Gateshead in the FA Trophy semi-final that same season. Despite the departure of Robbie Savage before the 2025-26 campaign, the Silkmen seemed to find their level with the big boys of the sixth-tier National League North.
Now under John Rooney, Wayne’s younger brother, who had been patrolling the Macclesfield midfield the previous season, the Silkmen also put together a run in the FA Cup. A hat-trick from Danny Elliott helped to see off Totten 6-3, before his penalty set up a win at Slough Town and a subsequent dream tie at home to Crystal Palace.
During the run, Smethurst bowed out, his mission accomplished in more ways than one. In place is not only a club on the up, but a foundation, its activities including free football coaching for local children during the week. Only one tragic note hung over Moss Rose as Macclesfield prepared for their cup game with holders Palace in January 2026: the recent loss of Ethan McLeod, whose car hit a motorway barrier as the 21-year-old striker was returning from a league game at Bedford Town.
GROUND Guide
The field of dreams – and the story behind it
Moss Rose, aka Leasing.com Stadium, is a pleasingly old-school mix of seating and terracing, providing an overall capacity of 5,300. Macclesfield’s home since 1891, it consists of two facing seated stands, the open Silkmen Terrace for standing away supporters behind the north goal and the revered home Star Lane End. There’s also a standing terrace, sponsored by 5K Distribution, alongside the Main Stand, which takes up the remaining third of the long touchline.
Visiting supporters are also allocated Block J of the seated Moss Lane, aka Besseges, Stand nearest the Silkmen Terrace. Blocks A-I accommodate home fans and neutrals in comfort. This former McIlroy Stand, was opened shortly after the Silkmen’s single season in the third tier, and holds 1,500 seats.
Note that if you opt for an unsheltered spot on the terraces, whether you’re an away fan on the Silkmen Terrace or a home one on the 5K Distribution Terrace, with the Peak District close by, Macclesfield can be a very rainy place to watch a football match. The weather shouldn’t affect the pitch, however – it’s 4G artificial turf.
getting here
Going to the ground – tips and timings
The ground is a 30min walk from Macclesfield train station, heading south down Sunderland Street (left out of the station), past the George & Dragon and Jolly Sailor pubs. Veer left at the bottom, then straight down London Road.
From the bus station, High Peak service 14 leaves every 30mins from Bay 8, taking 10-15mins to reach Cornbrook Road, then the Co-Op, both close to the ground a dozen stops away. Note that the last service from town is 6.10pm, so plan accordingly for an evening game. There’s no service at all on Sundays. Going back into town, the bus also passes by the train station, the last services leaving the ground at 6pm and 6.20pm respectively.
The SAT NAV code for Moss Rose is SK11 7SP. There is plenty of road-side parking around the ground – the few spaces behind the Star Lane End fill up fast.
getting in
Buying tickets – when, where, how and how much
Tickets for home games months in advance can be purchased online. With the key exception of stellar FA Cup ties such as the visit of Crystal Palace in January 2026, when thousands queued for the 800 available tickets and were turned away disappointed, availability is rarely a problem, even with 1,600 season-ticket holders.
To check if pay-on-the-day is available, call 01625 426 708 or email info@macclesfieldfc.com. The ticket office is behind the Star Lane End – look out for the sign saying ‘Macclesfield FC Junior Academy’.
For home or away supporters, a standing place on the terraces is £18 (over-65s £14, students £11, under-18s £8, under-12s £3.50). A seat is only £1 dearer across the board, 50p extra for under-12s.
what to buy
Shirts, kits, merchandise and gifts
The club shop (Mon-Fri 4pm-8pm, match days) at Moss Rose stocks the current iteration of Macclesfield blue, with white sleeves, shoulders and collar. Trendy North London urbanwear merchants Duck and Cover are the sponsors, their name emblazoned across the second kit of white with pink trim, and third-choice shirt of black with a thick round grey collar.
Where to Drink
Pre-match beers for fans and casual visitors
The only pub nearer the stadium just off the main road down from the station, the traditional Railway View overlooks the tracks from its vantage point at the fork of Byrons Lane. Hand-pulled ales are served by the warmth of a roaring fire in winter.
The transformation at Macclesfield cannot be better illustration than the swish Bar Twenty Seven (Mon-Fri 4pm-10pm, Sat-Sun noon-9.30pm) overlooking the pitch, match action screened on a vast TV wall.
For all these classy surroundings, the match-day menu provided by Suburban Green from Wilmslow is reasonably down-to-earth, featuring notch-above versions of bacon sandwiches, burgers and the like. Fish & chips come with mushy peas, of course. The sensible away fans allowed entry after the game might baulk at the spiced treacle-glazed lamb kebab all the same.
Drinks-wise, it’s also pretty standard, with a couple of craft options among the more standard beer taps, and wine drinkers are well catered-to – private functions and networking events are frequently staged here.
Depending on the fixture, visiting supporters may be let into to join in the family-friendly fun at the pre-match fanzone, another new feature of Macclesfield 2.0.
