Player Database: Adam Buckley

By: Richard Hubbert
Date: 14/07/2002

In all honesty, poor little Adam was on the slippery slope of becoming one of Town's most hated players of the late 90s even before he took his first step into the Grimsby first team. But when he did, the circumstances of his arrival did him no favours at all. Adam was given his debut away at Tranmere in the 1999/2000 season on the left of midfield. This at the time was a major shock to all Town fans, with both David Smith and Kingsley Black - two very capable left wingers - found sitting on the bench. Town fans feared for the worst - surely Buckley was not going to annoy us all by playing his own son all the time? We hoped not.

However, the bewilderment continued when he was given his full home debut - most Town fans could not understand why he was in the first team. He had no pace, no skill and seemingly not a lot of energy to actually run up and down the line! In all fairness he did have one quality - his left foot. He could cross a ball reasonably well and hit one too, but he was never in the Kingsley Black or David Smith league. All things could have changed in his second game at Blundell Park when Town played Norwich and Buckley hit the bar - if that had gone in, everything could have been different and he would have been a hero, but it didn't. From then on in, Buckley's form dipped, but his Dad persisted in playing him. Every time his Dad took him off, Buckley very carefully took him off with another Town player, so that he was not exposed to too many jaunts and boos from the Grimsby fans. But this plan failed, and really there was no way young Adam would ever win over the Town fans, at a time when his Dad was becoming increasingly unpopular.

After his Dad was sacked, inevitably Adam never wore a Town shirt again and unsurprisingly followed his Dad down the road from me to Sincil Bank. Being a Lincolnshire Echo reader it is no surprise that exactly the same thing is happening there and Adam is fast becoming a disliked Lincoln City player along with former Town loanee Ian Hamilton! Now that Buckley senior has gone it will be interesting to see if Adam figures regularly in the cash plagued side or simply rots in the reserves like he did at Town after his Dad departed.

Next Player: Clive Mendonca

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