LIFE is a rollercoaster, so the song goes, and no more so than when you run a non-League football club.

Brent Peters has had his ups and down - mostly downs - with Bacup Borough.

He has put virtually everything he has into the North West Counties Division Two club, saving them from the ignominy of relegation to the West Lancs League, building a facility for the community but suffering bankruptcy in the process.

It has been said that Bacup is a one-man club, with Peters managing the side, serving the beer, making the sandwiches and even cutting the grass.

"Everything that involves the football club on or off the pitch goes through me," he admitted.

"But when I came here I said no one man can run a whole football club. You have to have a structure in place. Get it right at the top and then it will be right at the bottom."

Peters took over the reins at the club, originally as temporary team manager, in the 1997-98 season, when the clubhouse was just a lock-up and the side was in turmoil on the pitch.

"I'd been working at Doncaster Rovers with Kerry Dixon. They offered me a new deal but with the 160-mile round trip and the financial worries there I didn't want to stay.

"There were players at Bacup at the time who used to play for me at Rossendale United. People like Linton James, Mark Rawstron, Nigel Miller and Wayne Gary.

"They were pushing the committee to take me on as manager but when I was youth team coach at Bury we were involved in some big games so I wanted to go to a Football League club or a higher non-League side.

"I had been invited to watch Manchester United play Coventry by Wilf McGuiness and when I got back from the game Bacup had been beaten 10-0 by Tetley Walker.

"I got another call and decided to go as manager until the end of the season."

The side finished a creditable 14th but off the field the club was a mess.

"The people whose names were on the deeds didn't want to run the club any more. The only person left was me and Frank Manning, the secretary," said Peters.

"A proposal was put to me to take over the running of the club.

"The North West Counties League were threatening to downgrade the ground and then we would have ended up in the West Lancs League.

"The FA were asking for money to enter the league for the new season but it wasn't my club and the people whose club it was weren't interested so I was left in a position where if I didn't pay it there would be no club. And then it wouldn't have been worth taking on board anyway.

"I had to prepare a squad for the new season and you have to have some finances to do that.

"The question was should I put my own money in when the club wasn't mine? I had to, even with no security."

The clubhouse was 'a lock-up and a brick bar' at the time and Peters thought he had to get that part of the club right before team matters were considered.

"You wouldn't have had your breakfast in the place at that time," he said. "It was being vandalised every week.

"The football had to take second place because I had to do something with the bar.

"We were coming up to the World Cup in 1998 and I didn't have the finances to go the whole hog but I had just sold my businesses (Dewhust Removals, Brent Peters Distribution and Turners Removals) and I wanted to make this place respectable.

"I decided, with the World Cup coming up to name the bar after my son, Martin. When he was born I knew I would bring him into football and with a name like Peters what better name to call him than after a 1966 World Cup winner? Then with the World Cup coming up in 1998 I decided to name the bar after him.

"I kept approaching the previous owners for the license. I rang the court and to my amazement there wasn't a license so we had to apply for one but we didn't get it before the World Cup.

"And then we had to improve the facilities even further to get a license. There was many a time when I sat in the bar and broke down thinking I had bitten off more than I can chew."

But Peters, with some help, pulled the club out of the mess that had been created.

"I'd put my family on the line. I couldn't go backwards, I had to go for it," he said.

"With the massive help of one businessman we went on and the sports bar eventually opened.

"As with any new business you don't expect to make money in the first few years but we will get there."

Peters suffered bankruptcy before the sports bar could open and now his daughter Natalie and father Ken are trustees of the club.

"If I hadn't taken over at Bacup I would probably have invested my money in another business and would be managing or coaching a team a lot higher than this one," he said.

Over the past few years Peters has taken on a commercial manager in Deborah O'Connor and a Project Manager, Peter Marland.

"We have an excellent team off the pitch now," he said. "Even though I'm not the easiest person to work with."

The clubhouse is now in use most evenings and is open as a cafeteria in the daytime.

"I could have come here and got the best players in and got instant success which would have made my CV look quite good because I have won trophies wherever I have been.

"But I like a challenge. Rossendale United was a challenge for me as well.

"Look at them 10 years ago compared to today. Accrington Stanley too. I have the greatest respect for what Eric Whalley has done there."

And Peters is hoping, if he gets it right on the pitch as well as off it, he can follow in Whalley's footsteps and take Bacup Borough up the football pyramid.