by hector » 13 Apr 2017, 10:43
The year after provided an even worse collapse, as the team were quite a few points clear towards the end of the season. My grandad always maintained that the club threw promotion intentionally. I remember years ago as a student at SDTC, where Bobby Baxter was providing us with our Wednesday afternoon football training, I told him what my grandad had said, and he seemed to imply it was true.
Whatever, two years running, blowing promotion in heartbreaking circumstances, following the way they lost out ten years earlier to Ipswich, just set the tone for the future. In the preceding 50 years, we have only been promoted three times and came close in 1988, 1994, 1998, 2008, 2011, 2012. Anyone looking for patterns might notice that every year ending in 8 we mess the play-offs up, and with 2018, that might mean we are stuck in the Conference South for at least two seasons.
I find losing out on promotion much harder to take than getting relegated and as such have missed two promotion matches (Southend, Cambridge) as the days when I have watched us miss it, especially v Swansea, Leyton Orient when a point would have been enough have been too devastating.
The year after provided an even worse collapse, as the team were quite a few points clear towards the end of the season. My grandad always maintained that the club threw promotion intentionally. I remember years ago as a student at SDTC, where Bobby Baxter was providing us with our Wednesday afternoon football training, I told him what my grandad had said, and he seemed to imply it was true.
Whatever, two years running, blowing promotion in heartbreaking circumstances, following the way they lost out ten years earlier to Ipswich, just set the tone for the future. In the preceding 50 years, we have only been promoted three times and came close in 1988, 1994, 1998, 2008, 2011, 2012. Anyone looking for patterns might notice that every year ending in 8 we mess the play-offs up, and with 2018, that might mean we are stuck in the Conference South for at least two seasons.
I find losing out on promotion much harder to take than getting relegated and as such have missed two promotion matches (Southend, Cambridge) as the days when I have watched us miss it, especially v Swansea, Leyton Orient when a point would have been enough have been too devastating.
