Goals galore! Celebrating Michael Cheek and the man whose record he surpassed

It’s getting late at Hayes Lane. Floodlights dim, media folk mill, subs warm down, broadcasters pack up. Twenty minutes earlier, Bromley suffered a last-gasp equaliser courtesy of an apology-email of a refereeing decision, and now, in the shadow of the John Fiorini stand, the atmosphere is muted, bordering on sour.

Suddenly, there’s movement at the end of the tunnel. Out into the night air steps Michael Cheek, his frame still steaming from the game’s exertions. He’s there to accept the Sky Bet Player of the Match trophy, and he does so with a broad smile and short-sentenced gratitude. Photo taken, plastic trophy in hand, he strides away towards the tunnel, but stops when a young fan calls out to him, requesting a selfie. “Of course, mate,” Cheek replies, dipping into the boy’s orbit to smile at the camera once more. Photo taken, plastic trophy in hand, Bromley’s top goalscorer of the modern era slips away into the humid stank of the tunnel, leaving the young fan beaming in his wake.

Michael Cheek accepts the EFL Player of the Match trophy.

Humility is a trait that we attach to footballers with caution. Achieving success demands an inner drive and utter ruthlessness that is hard for the average fan to fathom. It demands you live clean and set a spotless example while surrounded by ads for gambling and booze. It demands sacrifices and repetitions that turn a beloved sport into a near-robotic existence. Eat, sleep, all of the above, repeat. This is the modern athlete.

So when we see a footballer behaving in an approachable and open-hearted way, there’s a part of us that feels slightly disbelieving. We watch and wait for the mask to fall, revealing the hard-wired cyborg beneath, forgetting of course that footballers are just people. But when we watch “just people” relentlessly scoring goals, topping charts, and winning accolade after accolade, it’s hard to imagine there’s a real person in there and not just a series of pistons and football algorithms.

And then he goes one better. On Saturday 6th September 2025, at around 5:43 PM, Michael Cheek surpassed Butch Dunn’s record of 132 goals for Bromley, making him the club’s top rifleman in the modern era. Michael has been chipping away at Butch’s record since he signed for Bromley in May 2019. At the time, manager Neil Smith said, “To get someone of his quality into our side for next season is massive for us as a club, and it shows where we want to go.”

A little over six years later, not only has Michael Cheek taken us “where we want to go,” his name has become synonymous with Bromley Football Club, their entities irreversibly entwined.

In the circumstances, you could forgive a person if their ego drifted into the realm of the untouchable, but despite the accolades, superlatives, and jealous glances from rival clubs, away from the pitch, Michael Cheek’s humility remains. I imagine it’s a different story on the pitch, but few of us will ever meet him there, and it’s probably for the best.

You might have noticed that announcements regarding Cheek’s club record come with the qualifier ‘modern era.’ This tips a hat to the heroes of Bromley’s amateur years, where the club established itself as one of the best in the (non)business. If we include that halcyon period, the club’s top scorer of all time is George Brown, who played between 1938 and 1961, racking up an unassailable 570 goals in his 23 years in a Bromley shirt. To save you getting your calculator out, that’s an average of almost 25 goals a year.

George Brown scored 570 goals for Bromley between 1938 and 1961.

That kind of tally would be statue-in-the-carpark territory were it not for the fact that George played during an era when scorelines frequently reached double figures and formations sometimes featured eight attackers. When you could get called up to war tomorrow, why not throw caution to the wind? No matter how you spin it, the man had a dastardly eye for goal and more than deserves his place in the pantheon.

But what of Butch Dunn, the man Michael Cheek surpassed to become Bromley’s modern-day capocannoniere? Can we truly celebrate Michael Cheek’s achievement without fleshing out the story of the man he has eclipsed?

For many, myself included, Butch Dunn is just a name and a few sepia-toned photographs, but to a generation of Bromley fans, he was a renegade hero. There is no video evidence of his time beneath the floodlights, just newspaper clippings and memories, but his evocative name still stands for something at Hayes Lane, and that should always be the case.

Myth and legend, Butch Dunn.

Vernon ‘Butch’ Dunn died in July 2020 at the age of 67, and is no doubt greatly missed by fans, family, and teammates alike. But while people pass, legends live on.

However, legends only survive if we hand the stories down, and that’s where I hit upon a problem. Butch signed for Bromley in 1978 and played his final game for the club in 1982, three years before I was born, so I have no right to roam on the subject. The only way I could hope to understand the player and his era was to reach out to the older and wiser heads who were there when it happened. The heads in question were Colin and Mike Head, cousins who were taking their formative steps in Bromley FC fandom when Butch was doing his thing. With wide-eyed admiration for a land before my time, I asked Colin and Mike what Butch Dunn meant to them.

Colin began, “Butch was a strong leader of the line, not really tall at 5’10, but very good in the air. He had the eye for a goal-scoring opportunity, just like Cheek. It was clear from the outset that he was a cut above and that he also played to his own tune.” Mike added, “He seemed a born goal scorer. The amount he notched is a testament to how special he was. Although it helped that he mainly played in decent Bromley teams.”

Colin wrote an article about Butch for the old Bromley fanzine Two Footed Tackle. One passage in particular adds colour to the grainy photos of the forward in his pomp.

“He always wore the number 8 shirt, unusual for a striker in those days, cutting a distinctive figure with his trademark beard and shirt outside his shorts. Butch was a genuine cult hero, a slightly maverick character who did things his own way, but always delivered a regular supply of goals.”

I asked the cousins why, given his goal-scoring talent, Butch spent his career in non-league football. “Maybe because he did things his own way,” Colin offered. “There were a number of players back then who could have stepped up but were happy playing semi-pro and combining football with work.” Mike agreed that Bromley suited Butch and that he was just enjoying his football. “It was a sad day when he left to join Dartford,” he concluded. “In retrospect, that was when my dislike of Dartford began.”

It’s easy to forget the effect that the players of yesteryear have had on the club of today, so I asked where Bromley would be without Butch Dunn’s goals. “Without Butch, Bromley may not have been promoted to the Isthmian Premier in 1980. I think he scored 47 goals that season. So, in that sense, he played a huge part in our history,” said Mike. Colin added, “He also kept us up with vital goals in 1982. I think his legacy, to those of us who watched him, was just the pure enjoyment of witnessing a goal-scoring legend.”

Butch Dunn gracing mud-sodden turf at Hayes Lane, Bromley.

A lot of turbulent water has passed under Bromley’s bridge since then, but Butch helped to cement Bromley’s respectable non-league status in the early ‘80s, and without that period of stability, the club might be in a very different place today.

Colin and Mike have witnessed the Butch Dunn and Michael Cheek eras first-hand, so they’re as well placed as anyone to compare them, but both agree that it’s hard to hold them up side by side. “To be honest, Bromley Football Club is a completely different entity in 2025, playing at a level never thought achievable over forty years ago,” Colin pointed out. “That said, both players won a promotion and a cup, which were huge achievements for the club in their respective eras.”

I wondered if there were any similarities between them as players. “Both had a similar physique and strong aerial ability, and don't look like super-human strikers until they are in the box and the ball is at their head or feet.” Colin went on to say that he has noticed that neither striker could be accused of excessive celebration. “There's just a casual acknowledgement of ‘this is what I do’ before heading back to the centre circle.”

What does Michael Cheek mean to Colin and Mike? Both said the same: “Goals!” Mike added, “I always fancy us to score now. For years, Hayes Lane was known as a strikers' graveyard. Guys would score lots then move to Bromley and struggle. Now, even people at work who follow Premier League clubs have heard of Michael Cheek.”

Then Colin went and summed it up perfectly. “When we signed Michael in 2019, I thought Smudge had pulled off a real coup. He'd scored goals against us for every team he'd been at and was a name that sent a shudder through opposing fans when you saw him on the team sheet. But he's actually exceeded my expectations, not just in the sheer number of goals, but in scoring vital ones in key games like the FA Trophy and play-off final, making himself a modern-day legend. His name will go down in club history with the likes of Butch Dunn and George Brown.”

Michael Cheek celebrates his match-winning goal at Wembley in the FA Trophy final.

Because Michael Cheek has broken the scoring record while playing at the highest level in the club’s history, his achievement seems all the more remarkable. I don’t say that to denigrate George Brown or Butch Dunn, but I think they would both agree that thumping the finest National League and League Two defences puts Michael Cheek in a different category. The difficulty rating is off the charts.

Michael Cheek wasn’t born when Butch Dunn set his record, and it might be the case that the player who breaks Cheek’s record hasn’t been born yet either. Or perhaps it’ll be the young lad he stopped to take a selfie with. Stranger things have happened.

But thanks to modern technology, when that future record-breaker researches Michael Cheek, he won’t get grainy photos and news clippings; he’ll get a video essay in early 21st-century goalscoring. Who knows, he might even learn something.

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With special thanks to Colin Head and Mike Head for their much-valued time and input. I did reach out to Bromley Football Club to see if Michael Cheek fancied adding a few words, but he was busy building an extension on his trophy cabinet.

First published by From Bromley With Love on 17/9/2025.

Michael Cheek photos supplied by photographer Martin Greig.