Try telling Stones it was all a dream
IF YOU look beyond the distraught emotions of NonLeague fans, club officials and management teams at the prospect of a voided season, the group I feel the most for is the players.
To have results expunged is a dagger to the heart. Who is going to tell someone like FC United’s Tunde Owolabi that his 28 goals didn’t happen? Or Bromsgrove Sporting’s Michael Taylor’s 24 goals will never figure in the record books? Or that the 500th appearance a long-serving player made for his club didn’t happen?
The 2019-20 season was ripe with drama and brilliant football throughout NonLeague. The quality of South Shields’ 5-3 win over FC United on the ‘last day’ of the season was worthy of many divisions higher. Yet it didn’t happen.
My own club, Wealdstone, have enjoyed a season like no other. The excellence of a squad – brought together by Dean Brennan in his very first season in charge – stormed to the top of the National League South table on August 26 and have been there ever since. How can you tell this dedicated bunch of over-achieving players that there will be no reward for their hard work and sheer brilliance over eight months? Even more scarily, how many of the players will still be with the Stones once the new season resumes and they are cherry-picked by more affluent clubs?
At the very least, football’s administrators must ensure that the 2019-20 season is NOT expunged. Results and stats must live on, if only as an ‘interrupted season’. The FA owes that to the players who have spent eight months entertaining us.
TIM PARKS, via email