"Centre halves are heads on sticks."
In certain spheres of British football Michael's assessment rings true.
We are chatting on the touchline, two blokes who love the game and played it in an era when you had to commit a section 18 assault to get a red card.
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But the irony is that his own daughter is a gifted, cultured, defender.
Ella Mooney moves forward from a left back berth and surges past the opposition's midfield with the unstoppable certainty of a cruise liner gliding through a calm Mediterranean.
She has steel too.
Ella once played for Manchester City and it shows - no panic, but plenty of vision and panache.
Her blend of class and grit is mirrored throughout the team she now plays for.
They wear the white shirts and blue shorts of a proud footballing town.
The same club was once blessed - albeit for only five games - by the bewitching talents of a young Stan Bowles, and was where the awesome stamina and huge potential of Colin Bell was spied by Malcolm Allison.
The flying binman, alias Neville Southall, a Welsh international and Everton legend, also started his professional career there.
Like many small clubs it has been a springboard for raw talent to progress.
But in August 2019 Bury FC, founded in 1885, were thrown out of the football league after years of ducking winding up orders due to a calamitous financial state.
Bury FC Women's Foundation carried on playing thought the turmoil - but suffered their own turmoil too.
In 2019 the club's ladies won promotion to the Premier of the North West Area League.
They had graced the famous Gigg Lane pitch with several games on their way to becoming champions of Division 1 - losing just once in 20 games.
The ensuing chaos at the club saw an exodus of nine of the women's side and they were unable to take their place in the Premier.
A painful slide in their fortunes, and down the leagues, followed.
As the club plunged into crisis, the women's team switched back from being financed by Bury FC to charitable funding - and did not stop playing.
Two and a half years on, the club name, memorabilia, and historic ground have been bought by a fans group, who have a target of the 2022/23 season for bringing football back to Gigg Lane.
And the women's team is on the cusp of a renaissance which is progressing faster.
The first team are at the pinnacle of a raft of teams of different age groups who play under the Foundation's banner.
The club's first female team was set up in 1996 - a visionary move.
The first team now sit second in the Championship of the Lancashire FA Women's County League.
It is four leagues below where they were in 2019. But after a season disjointed by COVID last year they are finally firing.
The architects of an impressive dovetailing of experience and youth into a team of spirit and flair are coaches Luke Haughey, 28, and Colin Platt, 48.
Shining above the end of the street in Ramsbottom where Luke lives, like a floodlit colossus, is Peel Tower, astride Holcombe Hill.
It is a symbol of the Borough of Bury - as is Gigg Lane.
He was actually born in Brent but at the age of seven his family 'moved back' to Bury, his mother's hometown.
Quietly spoken, he is the reverse of the touchline shouter when it comes to managing a football team.
But his authentic local roots fuel his loyalty to Bury FC Women and his calm determination to take them higher.
He has just completed his FA Level 3 (UEFA B) coaching course.
His shorthand for this is 'understanding your players, gathering player profiles, knowing what makes each individual tick, why do you play the formation you play; having the correct personnel for that formation.'
He works as a teacher at Hopwood Hall College in Rochdale, taking BTEC Sport and University foundation courses.
From the age of 11 to 18 he played football for local Bury side, Woodbank, and then for Liverpool John Moores University where he gained a Bsc (Hons) degree in Science and Football.
He also has a Masters Degree from the University of Salford in strength and conditioning.
He stopped playing at the age of 21 and coaching is now his passion - dictated by time and the responsibility of becoming a new father in November.
"My own personal philosophy for football is be loyal, work hard, be open and trustworthy.
"As long as you integrate the right principles of how you want to play the formations don't matter.
"It is about adapting to the players that you have and getting the best out of them.
"I have been a big believer of playing the ball on the deck. We are big encouragers of playing out from the back - when we do it we are fantastic at it.
"We have created a philosophy where I don't always tell them what to do. I ask questions and guide them to find their own solutions.
"At half time I never go and talk to them straight away. I give them three of four minutes to chat to themselves, let off some steam, identify problems amongst themselves, get their aggression out if they are frustrated.
"Then I will jump in, and mention things that I have spotted."
His ability to instill belief and identify flaws was witnessed in a friendly.
In a bid to stop rust during weeks of postponed games the team played a feisty Beechfield from Salford.
At half time they were 3-1 down - out fought, out muscled, and meek in the face of "loud" football.
Luke spoke to the team during the break. They emerged to play with swagger. Precise passing and snapping up every chance saw them win 6-3.
"I asked a simple question," he says. "'Are we going to win the ball in the air - no.
"So why are we still playing the long ball?' We had three attacking midfielders. I said, 'who is going take responsibility for sitting and protecting the back four?'
"I explained that should have been done mid first half not at half time - discussing it between themselves. It was just me, challenging them to think for themselves.
"It is important for the team to find out for themselves what is wrong. We are a team where we open up discussion, allow mistakes, and work to get us all to the right level."
Any flourish of indiscipline is quashed - not just by Luke - but the team as a whole.
A training drill became a series of tense spats in which ankles were kicked.
It ended early, and Luke tells the squad: "You need to channel that aggression.
"I like it, that aggression - but we use it to win things - not against each other. We are building a team."
Great partnerships can often stem from two totally different characters - like Malcolm Allison and Joe Mercer, Brian Clough and Peter Taylor.
If Luke is the gifted technician - his pitch-side shadow has an equally vital, but different role.
Colin Platt has the kind of easy-going demeanour you can't help but like.
"I feel privileged sometimes by what the players confide in me - it's not just dips in form, but off field stuff too - life," he says.
His pastoral role, as well as managing and helping with training is key.
A quiet word of encouragement from him can turn round a bad performance, or banish shattered confidence after a mistake.
He played as a goalkeeper from the age of 13 to his 30s - and knows from experience the fine line between hero and clown.
His career spanned Philips High School in Whitefield, pub teams, and a fledgling Dorking Wanderers - now members of National League South.
Colin, from Radcliffe, has the task of dealing with contacting the opposition to arrange games and league officials, as well as carrying nets and flagpoles back to a tin shed.
But it's dealing with the players' off and on field issues that make his presence crucial to the team's progress.
"I feel like a social worker sometimes," he says. "One night we even had a big discussion about the referendum regarding Brexit - they were asking what they should do.
" I said I couldn't tell them what to do, but advised they read newspapers, watched the news, to educate themselves."
Colin first manged the reserves for four years and was goalkeeping coach for the club.
"When Bury FC collapsed we had to start again and I took over the mantle of managing the first team.
"Last year we only had one team, now we are back to a first team and reserves.
Of the squad, he said: "I rate them very highly. Very young squad, with an average age of 19 or 20.
"If they stick together for a few more years they will be even better. We have eight games of the season to go but I do think we can get promotion.
"We don't fear anyone. That is thanks to the impact of Luke coming in.
"I hold my hands up, I'm not an outfield coach - if you want 20 goalkeepers I'm your man - but as an outfield coach I am nowhere near. Luke is what the girls need and deserve."
"For me football is work hard, train hard, and have fun. If you are enjoying it that's a massive bonus, win, lose, or draw.
"You don't need to pick on things during a match, saying 'you did this wrong'.
"You work on them in training. You don't blame individuals, as they say there's no i in team.
"Over the years we have had a lot of players that have come from Man United, City, Blackburn, the academies.
"I am not a big fan of kids' academies. They go to them, think they are the bees knees, and there are players ten times better already there."
There is no shortage of technical ability in the Bury side, and the hope is that as they mature, the nous needed to ascend will flourish.
Team captain, Rosin Yildirim, works as a project manager for Network Rail, based at Manchester Piccadilly, monitoring bridges and other infrastructure for cracks and damage.
She admits, at the age of 30, she is beginning to creak herself, but her joy in playing shows no sign of being extinguished.
She began at the age of seven with Bolton Wanderers, where she stayed until she was 15, before briefly switching to Manchester City, and then leaving the game "as education came first".
At Kent University, where she gained a BA in English and American Literature, she resumed playing and later returned to Bolton before joining Bury at the age of 23, alternating between the first team and reserves.
"When the men's team collapsed the women's team disbanded. Myself and a few of the other originals stayed, and then we have watched players from the under 18s come through to us. But we have had so many variations of a team," she says.
"My dad got me into football, and then as soon as I started watching it, it was just magic to me that you could do that with your feet.
"When you are on the pitch your intellectual brain turns off. All of sudden, its's just your feet doing the work.
"I am thirty now, I have what feels like permanent shin splits and something going with my hip flexor, and I cannot give it up. I will be here until something breaks and can't be repaired.
"Everything takes longer to repair after 21 and because I can't stop playing there's no rest.
"In another five years I will definitely be on the vet's team, in another three years I might be on the bench.
"I feel responsible as captain to be here at training. If I wasn't in the mood, I would still be here to walk around.
"I can find it fun, being ten years above the average age here."
On the pitch her leadership manifests itself in constant encouragement and vocal self-criticism when she makes a mistake.
"When I screw up and scream I feel like it's the release of stress from the week - then I crack on."
Her work career, she says, aids her role on the pitch.
"I think having a job in construction and civil engineering where you have to be vocal as a manager, where you have a lot of men underneath you who are mostly older than you and you have to organise and manage them, has played a part.
"With the team I am really cheesy, like cracking jokes and sorting them out. When you are seen as a bit of joker but with authority it's easy to gee them up."
Manchester City's Women's team won the league cup this month, and they and Manchester United's team are helping to raise the profile of the women's game.
"You can't deny that its got a lot more profile in the last five years or so. Major clubs have put more money into it, like City, United, and Chelsea," Rosin says.
"In my opinion Chelsea have got one of the best managers in the Super League in Emma Hayes.
"But I still think there is very much a case of - we have given it enough money - we can get back to men's football.
"It's always a case of women's football has the worst referees, pitches, facilities.
"If they were really serious about it they would pay the referees the same as they pay Mike Deane.
"It's coming along, but it has hit a peak and is stagnating, I think.
Her main focus is the team she leads. Said with years of experience behind her, not arrogance, she says: "They are the best players I've seen in the league, sometimes it's hard to play together if we are not in the right frame of mind, but individually phenomenal.
"We have a strong back four, middle, and up front - something you rarely see in teams.
"It is a perfect blend of age, physique and motivation. The experience of players like myself is helping the younger ones come through.
"It is grassroots football at the end of the day and a lot of the girls are here to enjoy it.
"When mistakes happen on the pitch it is important to say to players 'no problem'. If someone scores after I screw up, is that going to ruin my week?
"If something goes wrong, the players know we are a team and move on to the next game.
"Everyone here is hungry to play. Girls get annoyed when they are on the bench and only get 20 minutes."
But she concedes that there is an edge to the team - who want to win. "I think we will be champions, I think we will batter Clitheroe."
The team's dedication is impressive. One afternoon they won 6-0 away at Blackburn in a valley whipped by a fresh autumn wind.
Recently they slotted in a training session in hours of calm between Storms Dudley and Eunice.
The Bury Community Football Trust owned Goshen Sports Centre is their home with its fast floodlit synthetic pitch, plus grass surfaces. They have done drills in thick mist and downpours.
It is not academy level football, yet the standard still delivers sublime moments of skill and, with Bury FC Women, astonishing firepower.
In 12 games they have scored 94 goals and let in just 13. Kimberley Tyson, has netted 30 and not missed a game.
Sophie Coates, another ex Manchester City player, has notched 22 in just seven games.
This year England will stage the UEFA Women's Euro championship, with the first game on July 6th between England and Austria at Old Trafford.
It will be a spectacle which may well stimulate further growth of the women's game.
Meanwhile by then, Bury FC Women, on the football plains of Lancashire, may have already taken a huge step towards bringing pride back to a town where the game deserves to thrive.
This month members of the team helped in the clean up of the empty Gigg Lane.
Diana Golding, chair of Bury FC Foundation, whose daughter, Lucy, is in the first team squad, said: "The women are beginning to reclimb the divisions and the men will have to do the same.
"We have the pathway below the first team now too - with the reserves and under 18s.
"We have female teams right down to under 9s. We have three under 10s teams, three under 15s, and two under 16s.
"The ethos of the club is inclusivity - everyone can play. But the players aspire too to the first team - the chance to play senior football."
"The Women are in a very good position to progress up the leagues. We have achieved this success before, we know what it looks like, we know what it takes to get there and we have the attributes and ambition to succeed again.
"It was devastating to have it taken away from us in 2019 through circumstances beyond our control.
"We didn't give up though and we knew we had to keep a team going. We knew we had a pathway of talented players coming through the club that aspired to play women's football.
"The women's team has always been the pinnacle of the club and we didn't want to lose that.
"It was a shame we had to drop down a couple of leagues, but there was nothing we could do about it, but to rebuild."
"We are in a great position now, especially as we are entering our second season of talented U18s players joining the senior teams.
"With a first team and a reserves we are in a good position to continue providing the level of football that is right for the players coming through.
"Our ability to develop and progress young players has been proven to be successful and this is now playing dividends with our women's team, hence the league position they have been holding most of the season.
"The reward this season will be promotion which is definitely what we deserve at this stage.
"We do ultimately see our Women's Team being back on Gigg Lane in the near future and hopefully with the Club now returning this will come to fruition.
"This in turn will continue to inspire our younger generation and attract new players to our Club.
"Playing at the stadium shines a very different light on our women's team and raises their ambitions further to climb up the leagues".
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