Forget the rest - this REALLY is the big one

We'll just have to disagree on that one Sam! I see it as drawing the game and then winning the penalty shoot-out... each to their own...

You're talking about "The Warren" the home of the former Yeading FC ~ Charlie Oatway's spiritual home and where the reserves of the newly constituted (they're only in the second season) Hayes & Yeading United play and the club's training and social base is located.

First team matches are staged at Church Road, the home of the former Hayes FC ~ Jason Roberts spiritual home and much beloved of "Sir" Les Ferdinand who has a club lounge named in his honour.......................................a rambling dump of a ground that was once able to house 15,000 crowds (not that they ever did get that many) that will be lucky to attract more than a thousand moribund souls opting to watch their football on the cheap rather than go all the way to Brentford or heavens above, QPR.

There's always talk of new stadiums being built in the area, but all that eve materialised was the Western International Fruit & Veg Market, the Minet Park cycle circuit and a million mosques and Hindu temples of quite eccentric and exquisite design; golden domes shining in the sunshine, the works ~ the aforementioned QPR, Brentford, even Chelsea have all been mentioned as having re-location eyes for the boring wastelands North East of Heathrow and South West of the UK capital of the Punjab that is Southall...................what a shock to the Devon boys that place will be especially if they arrive by the 207 bus from West London having traversed the yawn inducing two story nothingness of West Ealing and Hanwell only to be thrown without warning into the chaotic traffic, throbbing, drumming colourful and spice smelling assault to the senses that is Southall Broadway and then spewed out the other (Western) side to the ever bland anonymity of Hayes......................Hayes (which sounds reminiscent and in reality is) rhyming with "daze", "laze" ~ a place fit only to doze and snooze; yawn and booze. The "Dagenham" of the West, populated by men in turbans and women who combine the sari with the duffel coat as only Hayes Women can........................but you gotta watch those women my friend. I once had a girlfriend from Hayes, an outwardly demure and sweetly smiling young house doctor from the Charing Cross Hospital who once behind her front door became a clawing, pawing let yer hair down tigress from Srinagar who led me to her bathroom with the steps leading down to her sunken bath with it's gold taps and sweet smelling candles; her dining room with it's polished marble and ornate gold embossed figurines and her bedroom with it's chiffon draped huge and spacious bed that demanded occupation for a full 48 hour "weekend" in the middle of the week....................gosh that was twenty four years ago. If she saw me now she'd send me down to Fitness First whilst she checked over her stethoscope and got her defibrillator at the ready in case this fat old git had a seizure in that "lurvv lounge" of hers in outwardly boring old Hayes!

Sam’s right that Sunday is the most important game – because it is the next one. With hindsight, it may turn out to be our most important game ever or it may not – although of course we will only be able to guess what might have happened if the result had gone the other way.

Crystal Palace in 1957 and Barnet in 2001 were huge, but would we have been significantly better or worse off in the long term if the results had gone the other way? For me our biggest ever game was Crewe in 1987 because it made such a huge difference to the club’s long-term status.

The revisionist history of TUFC says that the club prospered until 1990, when Mike Bateson set about “scaling it down”. This is utter nonsense.

From relegation in 1972 onwards, the club was in constant danger of extinction. Tony Boyce battled as hard as he could (and I don’t think anyone else could have done a better job) but by 1984 he was desperate enough to let Dave Webb take over. The next two years were absolutely awful.

I can remember the feeling of optimism when Webb was chased out in 1986, but it was soon clear that we were struggling like hell. We released some of our better players and ended up fighting relegation with a squad made up with loanees and YTS boys.

After we scrambled clear in 1987, we appointed Cyril. That was a great appointment, but people forget that we wanted to keep Stuart Morgan but could not match what he was offered by the mighty Weymouth. Cyril’s genius brought two seasons of great success that saved the club. It all ended in ill-feeling with people asking where the money went. The money that Cyril raised kept the club alive.

If we had lost to Crewe in 1987, I am sure we would not have appointed Cyril. I am pretty sure that we would have struggled in non-league football. I’m sure crowds would have tumbled below the already pitiful levels. There were no role models of clubs bouncing back. Barrow, Bradford PA, Southport and Workington serve as examples of what we might have expected to happen next. If there is a stigma now to non-league football it is nothing compared to what it was back then. Relegation would have felt like the end of the world, and might even have been the end of the world.

I know that the twenty years after the Crewe game were not all a bed of roses, but those who think they could not possibly have been any worse are deluding themselves. Barrow are over the moon just to be in the BSP. Southport have just missed out on joining them, but the BSP is dreamland for Bradford PA and Workington.

I hope that Sunday’s game is not as “make or break” as that one twenty-two years ago.