Outside the back of the Main Stand, supporters gather around a group of picnic tables. There are some friendly digs with a family of Millwall supporters who presumably arrive with a reputation and then dispel it with self-deprecating humour. “We’ll be the first club out of the cup tonight” – they’re right.
Cambridge United’s Abbey Stadium feels gloriously non-league on a hot early August evening. If that could be interpreted as a slight, it shouldn’t be: friendly atmosphere, staff in Portacabins who welcome those they have never seen before like members of their extended family, a core of loud support in the terrace behind one goal and the rest of the ground filled with those who sit more quietly but come because they have always come and could never imagine not coming.
This is not quite the club that Mark Bonner rebuilt; that does a disservice to those who worked tirelessly to take this club away from administration following relegation to the National League, to the efforts that have gone into regaining control of a stadium that had to be sold to keep the club afloat and to the managers that worked in burdensome circumstances before him.
But Bonner knows it like few before him. He was a season ticket holder in the Habbin Stand as a child and got his first job in the community scheme immediately after leaving college in 2002. He coached teams from Under-9s to Under-16s level until the academy was closed. By 2011, Bonner was back with the Under-18s and then became academy manager in 2014 after promotion back to the Football League. He has been assistant first-team coach, first-team coach, interim head coach and caretaker manager. Forty per cent of his life has been spent working here.
When Bonner got the job on a full-time basis in March 2020, plenty of supporters feared – not unreasonably – that Cambridge were gambling upon inexperience. He also faced a unique scenario. Due to Covid-19, his first match would not come for six months and, when it did, there were no supporters to welcome him.
“The timing of me getting the job was actually a huge advantage because we were in a period of real uncertainty,” Bonner tells i. “We didn’t know when we would next play, what would happen to finances in English football. So to have someone at the helm who knew the club probably helped us to overcome a lot of the psychological uncertainty.
“Had it been somebody new, who was lumbered with all of that as well as having to deal with something every outsider faces, would have been a lot to handle. I had existing relationships, I knew the players and knew what sort of team I wanted out on the pitch. In lots of ways, the first game of last season was the biggest individual moment because we had got promoted [from League Two] and we had a full stadium. It became a celebration.”
If Bonner lacked experience both as a professional player and a permanent first-team manager, he has quickly made up for lost time. He surrounded himself with experience – clearly a savvy strategy – and has since overseen a remarkable rise. In his first full season, Cambridge were promoted to the third tier for the first time in almost two decades. Last season, they secured their highest league finish in almost 30 years and knocked Newcastle United out of the FA Cup at St James’ Park.
It’s @UEFA Pro Licence Graduation night! What an incredible evening. A real honour to receive the award from Gareth Southgate & Steve Holland. Huge thanks to everyone @EnglandLearning this cohort and all the tutors for the support & shared learning.
— Mark Bonner (@markbonnercufc) June 16, 2022pic.twitter.com/4Ntx2Y1Vcy
“Unexpected is the fairest way to describe it,” he says. “We were not expected to get towards the top of League Two, we were not expected to hang around and get promoted, we were not expected to stay up and we were not expected to stay up in midtable after a good start. But we did all of those things.
“The challenge now is to maintain momentum. We have strong ownership, senior staff and sporting director who all work brilliantly. Let’s be honest: it’s happened quicker than we thought and so it has been a whirlwind. But we are really ambitious. I think when you get young people driving your club, it creates a sense of ‘Where can we get to? Can we keep this going?’.”
It will not be easy. Bonner describes League One as a division of two halves, and he’s right. Last season, eight clubs had average home attendances of more than 10,000 and seven of those eight have played in the Premier League. Peterborough, Derby and Barnsley have come down from the Championship and will all be strong.
The key, according to Bonner, is to have a series of pillars that define the club’s identity, behaviour and ethos. Cambridge have had enough financial heartaches – Bonner has witnessed many of them – to know that overreaching would be foolhardy. But that does not mean that they cannot compete. Last season they beat Wigan, Portsmouth and Ipswich away from home. They won at MK Dons on the opening day and against Millwall on this balmy summer’s evening.
“At the start of every journey, you have to work out what you are before where you want to go,” Bonner says. “We know that we’re a club that has to develop players, either our own or other’s. We can be a bounce club that sells players and develops assets. We can be the club about which people say ‘Go there, you’ll do well, you’ll enjoy it and you’ll get better’.”
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If mid-table in League One is the height of Cambridge’s ambition for now, so be it. They were a bottom-half National League club a decade ago and relegation fodder in League Two in 2019. But Bonner is keen to stress that improvement is always possible. He understands the financial limitations and realises that you can rarely jump forward in leaps and bounds. But he also knows, more than anyone, the potential to make Cambridge United the very best it can be.
“This city is already famous in its own right, for education, for science, for its hospital. We want to make its football club part of that. To do so, we have to entertain people 23 times a year but we also have to inspire and educate the whole city about what we stand for. And, if we can do that, I think there’s still massive potential. My job is to keep up performances and to encourage people that investing their money and time into Cambridge United is an investment worth making.”
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