CAPTAIN courageous Chris Lucketti held back the tears as he embarked on his last lap of honour for the Shakers on Sunday.

Still coming to terms with the reality of relegation despite a final day 1-0 victory over Port Vale, he led his teammates back out on to the pitch to a standing ovation from the hundreds of fans who had stayed behind.

As he has done in each of his six years at Gigg Lane, Lucketti gave the fans the shirt off his back - literally this time as he tossed his jersey into the crowd, removing the Bury colours almost certainly for the last time.

"It was very emotional at the end and was very difficult to take in," he said. "The reception I got from the fans was brilliant."

He added: "It is too early to say where I will be next season. I will be speaking to the manager and chairman this week and taking it from there. "It is a fact of life at Bury that, because of limited resources, somebody has got to go every summer to balance the books. I think somebody will go this time too, but it is up to the club to decide who."

Burnley, Bradford and Wigan Athletic are among the front runners for his signature. Huddersfield's interest may now be at an end after manager Peter Jackson, a long-time admirer of Lucketti, was sacked this week, while Birmingham's capture of David Holdsworth from Sheffield United could end their pursuit of the central defender.

"Obviously, you want to play at the highest level possible and I'll have to wait and see what happens," said Lucketti.

"To be honest, I'm still coming to terms with relegation. It's the second time I've been relegated in my career.

"When I was at Halifax we dropped out of the Football League which was a bad experience. But this is a bit worse than that because I have been here six seasons and we have built the club up from nothing. When I came here we were fourth from bottom of the Fourth Division, so what we have done has been a fantastic achievement." Lucketti, who was controversially suspended for the last away game of the year at West Brom two weeks ago - which the Shakers cruelly lost in the dying minutes - said the whole team were down.

"Everyone is struggling to take in what has happened," he said. "We let ourselves down in the middle third of the season and that has cost us in the end.

"Over the full season we haven't scored enough goals. That is not blaming the forwards, that is the team. We attack and defend as a team.

"How we have been relegated with 19 clean sheets I just don't know. We have to accept it as a team."

The 27-year-old admitted it had been difficult to produce a sparkling end-of-season display as news of Queens Park Rangers' goal feast filtered through.

"Maybe events at QPR had an effect on the players. I asked a couple of the lads what the score was at half-time and they said it was 2-0," he explained.

"That made it hard for us to lift ourselves for the second half. But I said to the lads that anything can happen in football and we had to make sure we won our game.

"We then had to hope Palace could stage a bit of a fightback but they seemed to roll over instead. I don't think they did themselves justice by losing 6-0.

"We knew things weren't going for us from the reaction of the crowd. Our fans were very quiet and I think that transferred on to the field.

"It was the worst win I've ever experienced."

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