Title win has rekindled memories of Yazoo, Dillon and Webb
This season’s title win has reminded of 1983, when Yazoo, the Mighty Wah and Big Country were on the tannoy playlist (actually, if Eric Eisner is picking the tunes next year they’ll probably be heard again...) and when Kevin Dillon and Neil Webb were that generation’s – my generation’s, if you like – Paddy Lane and Abu Kamara.
Some of the same people who were on the pitch last Tuesday night were, like me, also on it then, but as kids rather than with their kids. Oh, and we had a key man named Rafferty in the team back then too.
The 82-83 campaign was not as convincing as this one has been but it was still scintillating in places and ended with the pot being lifted, and we went up to Division 2 with high hopes. Our first season in the second division was gungho – we won 4-3 some weeks, and lost 4-3 other weeks. Slight exaggeration, but we were among the highest scorers and the leakiest defenders.
We finished 16th, a placing that had John Deacon summoning Alan Ball from the youth team office to the first team office and leading us to two promotion near misses followed by a hit in an era that’s been well chronicled so many times.
And now I am wondering… we know football goes in cycles, all clubs have their highs, their lows, then end up where they have been before. So what are the chances of our 2024 elevation to the second tier reflecting the 1983 version? A bumpy first year with plenty to entertain and survival secured, then a few years of promotion pushes? It’s not beyond the realms.
That brings me to something that Michael Eisner has consistently said in interviews which I have been sceptical about. He’s always said he did not want Pompey to be promoted to the Championship until he can be certain they won’t go back down.
My response to that has always been “Sorry Mr Eisner, football doesn’t work like that. Promotion can never guarantee survival at the higher level.” And I still think you can’t totally fireproof yourselves from relegation. The league structure would be rather odd if you could. But maybe he genuinely thinks he has the power – and perhaps even the wealth – to make that true in his own club’s case. Perhaps he’s on to something; perhaps we’re immune, or close to it, to being a yo-yo club all the time Tornante are at the wheel? We’ll see, I suppose.
But as we look forward to a 24-25 season that will be full of new experiences and surely not short on highs and lows, it’s important to look back at the last 12 years.
My son, Adam, was nine when he witnessed the second of three Pompey relegations that came along in his first four years as a fan (that is the best way to start, I think – the only way really is up after such an opening to your life as a fan). I remember the day in 2012 well – we had to beat Derby and hope somebody else beat somebody else. And it was no real surprise when it ended in the drop to League One being confirmed and the players doing a weary lap of the pitch with fans sympathising with them but just wanting to go home.
We probably thought we’d be back up in a year or two, but we reckoned without the tail end of those grim years of rogue owners and off-field nastiness and nightmares dragging us down further, then taking longer than anyone thought it would to turn the juggernaut around again. As Andy Moon said on Radio Solent the other night, four years in League Two seemed an age – it’s a good job we didn’t know in 2017 another seven in League One were in front of us.
Pompey’s rise back up from 2012 has been tortuous at times, often painful to watch, but what it is they say? No pain, no gain. You can’t enjoy the highs if you haven’t been through the lows. So let’s pause and give due credit to all those that have played their part in everything that’s happened in the past 12 years and got us on the way back up.
I’d be daft to try to list even a fraction of the names of those who have done their bit but I’m going to do it anyway, so here’s some that come to mind off the top of my head: Iain Mcinnes, Ashley Brown,
Mick Williams and Mark Trapani are four that spring to mind immediately, with Trevor Birch probably deserving of being in that same company. Then there’s everyone who played parts big or small in the Pompey Supporters’ Trust, everyone who put hands in pockets, everyone who kept going to games when we didn’t win a single one between October 2012 and March 2013, Guy Whittingham,
Alan Knight, Andy Awford, Alan Mcloughlin and Paul Hardyman, countless other staff, coaches and players of those times; Paul Cook, Leam Richardson, Ian Foster, Mark Catlin, Cook’s teams who ended our run of bottom-half finishes and then got us out of the basement division; the Eisners, their board and staff, Jackett, Joe Gallen, the Cowley brothers, Simon Bassey, Andy Cullen, all the other players who have tried to get us out of League One, sponsors, season ticket holders, the regular away fans, the many who do such great work to keep Pompey’s profile high in the community and – of course – John Mousinho, Jon Harley, Rich Hughes and the 23-24 squad.
I’ll almost certainly have forgotten some crucial to the cause there – if that is you, I apologise. And this is as good a place as any to remember the fans, former players and others who have passed away before this new high point. We all know someone who’s not here to see it.