Fond farewell to Non-league football
IWAS talking to one of Richard Landon’s sons, Zak, just after the Halifax game. He’s not old enough to remember County playing League football and it occurred to me that there must be hundreds of young supporters who are about the same age and who are on the verge of something completely new, a whole host of, for them, new clubs and grounds to visit, new experiences to enjoy and enjoy them we will, in numbers.
When we fell into non league it was because we were failing as a club.
At board level we didn’t have the money or knowledge to get us out of trouble and that lack of resources led to a team sadly lacking in skill or professionalism to keep our League status.
We were where we were and had to take it on the chin, we weren’t there by default but because of our own lack of foresight and vision.
Even now there’s a raw feeling that it shouldn’t have happened but I don’t want to rake up bad feelings as we’ve just completed our come back and we should all be ecstatically happy.
For me, our journey through non league started on that day 11 years ago when the fixture list came out.
Our first foray was away at Forest Green Rovers and I have to be honest I had no idea where that was, our first game was at a place that didn’t even feature in any road map I could find. It turned out to be in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire and what an eye opener it was.
I was interviewed pitchside for the local radio station and when asked for a score prediction I, in a rather blase way, predicted an easy 2-0 win and that we’d bounce right back into the football league! How wrong I was.
Nick Chadwick scored an equaliser in a 1-1 draw and we were lucky to get that.
I was gutted at the performance but it was something I’d have to get used to.
That season I had a few Wrexham mates through work and I recall clearly that “this is the toughest league you’ll ever play in, it’ll take you four years to get it right.”
I just laughed – but how true those words were.
Bath, Tamworth, Hayes & Yeading, Braintree were all teams that caused us trouble but a 7-0 thrashing at Grimsby was the low point of a hugely disappointing season.
Knocked out of both FA Cup and Trophy in the first round by Southport and Stalybridge respectively... but of course it got worse, much worse.
On this 11 season journey we’ll all have had our own personal nightmares of games, grounds, performances and players that were just laughable.
How many times did we visit “stadia” that were just one step up from a farmer’s field behind a pub (Fylde, Leamington) how many times did we lose to bogey sides Brackley or Harrogate or Chorley?
Getting turned over 4-1 by Oxford City after taking a 45-second lead!
The International Stadium at Gateshead where you feel that you’re miles from the pitch, the hill to the away end at Dover.
Coming out through the park at both Chorley and Aldershot, especially in the dark.
But there have been some great nights too. Beating Chester 6-0 at the Deva, Darren Stephenson, kung-fooing the ball home from six feet in the air at Boston.
Frank Mulhearn scoring from near the halfway line at Dover.
Courtney Meppen-Walters doing the same at Harrogate and of course, this season (well the part that Chally was in charge), there’s so many great moments for this season alone that I could fill the paper, several times.
The one and possibly only thing I’ll miss most about non-league though are the people, on the
whole genuinely nice people, volunteers in the main who have nothing but love for their club, like the lady in the food hut at Brackley who cuts the crusts off the Vienna rolls because “they’re hard and nobody wants that”, like the bloke at Maidenhead who’s job title is Groundsman-kitman-concession stand manager-programme seller.
There were one or two idiots along the way too.
The oldest hooligan in the world at Lowestoft who threatened to “take me outside and do me in” simply because I was standing in his spot and when I pointed out that we were actually outside he just got madder.
He was in his 80s and his 60-year-old son had to calm him down.
There were also a couple of chairmen, Tamworth
and Fylde immediately spring to mind that always managed to annoy me but we can now all say farewell to all that as we’re back in the promised land.
It’s goodbye to the locally produced pies and hello to the sanitized, cellophane wrapped slop that passes for sustenance in the EFL.
I’m envious of Zak and his peers, they’re going to experience such exotic places as Gillingham,
Colchester, Stevenage and Crewe for the first time.
It’s going to be a blast. We have the best owner a club could have, the best manager we could hope for and as for the team? Well we’ve seen them defeat Bolton and Rochdale while narrowly losing to West Ham and Rotherham in the last two seasons, so there’s absolutely nothing to fear, so let’s all enjoy it and remember “WE ALL LIVE IN A CHAMPIONS TOWN”.