FORMER Shakers' skipper Chris Lucketti today tells just how close the club were to the Premiership.

The popular central defender, who moved to Huddersfield Town in a £1 million deal on Friday, reckons if Bury had managed to hold onto the top performers from their double promotion side they could have been within an ace of the top flight.

Lucketti is the second of the Shakers' prize assets to leave Gigg Lane in recent weeks following the departure of Eire B international Dean Kiely to Charlton Athletic last month.

And he says those financial restrictions that forced the exodus of star men year-in-year-out killed a once in a lifetime dream of big time glory.

"I said to Nick Daws recently that in four or five years time we'll look back on our time at Bury and say we had some side here," he explained. "We had a lot more quality in the team than we were credited with because a lot of people in the game were suprised at us winning promotion twice.

"If we could only have held onto the likes of David Johnson, Paul Butler and Dean Kiely we were only one or two players short of something special and who knows what we could have achieved.

"But it was absolutely superb for us to get to the First Division and clubs with a lot more money than Bury can only dream of doing what we did for those three or four years.

"But Bury will always be a selling club and it was impossible for us to buy replacements of that quality. It's sad but that's the way it is for a club of this size."

Another of the successful double promotion side looks set to leave Gigg Lane this summer.

Wing-back Dean West has turned down a new deal that virtually doubles his existing salary and is set to leave on a free transfer under the Bosman ruling.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.