Bamber Bridge boss Milligan finds fresh motivation after considering the end

Bamber Bridge manager Jamie Milligan has revealed he briefly wondered whether his time at the club was over after a limp end to last season, but says he is now fully refreshed and ready to go again for the new campaign.

According to The Non-League Football Paper, Milligan’s side endured a torrid run-in, winning just once in their final fourteen matches as they tumbled from sixth in the Northern Premier League table down to twelfth. The slide left Bamber Bridge nearer the relegation zone than the play-off places by the time the season closed.

A tame finish that hurt

Speaking to The NLP, Milligan admitted the poor form and performances in that final match of the season had left him deeply frustrated. “It hurts me more than anyone when we get beat and don’t perform,” he said.

The disappointing run-in came despite Bamber Bridge having sat in a promotion-chasing position for large parts of the campaign, and it prompted Milligan to muse publicly on whether that defeat might mark the end of his tenure in charge.

Ninth season in the top flight

Despite the wobble, Bamber Bridge’s league position was still enough to secure a ninth consecutive season in the Northern Premier League’s top flight at Step 3 of the non-league pyramid. That represents a notable achievement for a club that, as The NLP notes, effectively ran out of money in September 2024.

Maintaining a place among English football’s Step 3 clubs for nine years running is a significant marker of stability for a side that has had to overcome serious financial difficulty in recent times, and it underlines the scale of the rebuilding job Milligan has overseen at the club.

Ready to go again

Rather than walking away, Milligan has instead found what The NLP describes as a “second wind” heading into the new season, with the Bamber Bridge boss keen to put last term’s late-season slump behind him and build on the platform the club has established.

Non-league sides across the Northern Premier League will now turn their attention to pre-season preparations, with Bamber Bridge aiming to arrest the kind of late-campaign drop-off that so nearly cost them dear and to push back towards the top end of the table they occupied for much of last season.

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