Joining a new club is always likely to be an exciting event for a player - but the dream can quickly go awry if the manager who signed you is swiftly replaced. This is what happened to Frank Beaumont.

"I joined Bury from Barnsley in September 1961 [after the Shakers won the Third Division championship that May]," he now says in his still-blustery Yorkshire accent. "It was a step up after the two teams had been in the same division earlier that year - they weren't a gigantic club like a Manchester United, but it was better than being a small fish in a big pond," he adds.

Beaumont freely admits that the main reason he signed for Bury was the influence of then-manager Dave Russell. "He was like Bill Shankly, a canny Scotsman," he recalls. "I had no intention of signing when I met him, but in the days before agents he persuaded me. I was going to talk it over with my parents that night but he offered me a decent deal and I signed."

After guiding Bury to the second tier, Russell would soon be on his way. "It was sad really. He seemed to leave almost as soon as I arrived," Beaumont remembers.

Operating at either inside forward or left or right wing half, the boy from Barnsley quickly had some big games to adapt to. One of them came at Anfield where, according to Frank, the noise was deafening. "I'd played there before with Barnsley and always remembered them politely applauding us onto the pitch. But when the whistle blew, it was an unbelievable sound. They're the games you want to play in," he says.

Bury consolidated their place in the Second Division in 1961/62 and by the time the following season was a few months in, under the leadership of Bob Stokoe as player-manager, they'd become the 'surprise package' of the league.

We were knocking on the door for a while but it was the cold winter that really hit us," Beaumont remembers. Funnily, though, it didn't affect all the clubs in the region - Oldham, for instance, used to flatten the snow on their pitch and play on that. We used to go and watch them," he says.

Thanks to the harsh winter's toll, Bury would go on to finish a disappointing seventh in those pre-play off days - the closest the club ever came to regaining top-flight status. "Stoke, with Stanley Matthews, and Chelsea got promoted that season - it's amazing to think that we were up there with them," he says.

After 17 goals in 82 games, and with the previous season's team being dismantled, Beaumont left for Stockport and subsequently Macclesfield, where he took his first steps into management. He even experienced a fair degree of success at the Moss Rose when his side won the inaugural FA Trophy, beating Telford 2-0 in 1970.

Beaumont's native Yorkshire came calling once more when the time came to leave Cheshire. After a spell as player-coach at Gainsborough Trinity, his days in football came to an end at Frickley Colliery.