Post by Dave on Aug 25, 2008 19:04:13 GMT
I like so many of you fell in love with a football team, I think I was more lucky than some newer supporters, because when I first started going, we were enjoying big crowds and dare I say good football.
My club was a football league club and was for 80 years, not always on the football coupon, due to Saturday night kick offs, but when we played away, I would cycle as a young lad into Newton from Buckland, to get the H.E at around 6pm as it would have all the results in it.
During my 40 odd years as a fan, we nearly went out of the league many times, a few times we needed to go cap in hand to the league, as at that time it was not automatic promotion from the conference. It always worked, but the last time it happened, I did not think the league was going to save us again, but they did.
Then we were saved only because the winning team from the conference, did not have a ground up to standard, just one more lucky escape, but even cats only have nine lives.
I know when the day came, that final whistle, blown by the ref, the day we lost our league status, I did not think I would stop crying. It was not the tears I had cried before at a football match, no those tears were so different. It was my first ever trip to the old wembley, watching two teams I had never seen play before, but that did not matter. It was the noise the atmosphere that just got to me so much, that the tears came rolling down my face.
Being a small man, I have always had to be able to stand up to people, show my strong side, so as not to let anyone think they could push me around and It works.
But at home I'm a joke, well you see I feel others pain so much,I only need to watch something sad on the TV and my wife shouts out to pass Dave the tissues. Its why I have been able to help so many people who have needed someone to talk to, someone to understand.
These tears were real bad tears, my club so very much deep in my heart was now a non league team, all those years supporting a proper league team now gone. The problem for me is that I don't think in my heart I have every really accepted that my team is non league, I still felt we were a big team (well bigger than Weymouth) and did not belong in the BSP and it would not be there very long.
How many posts have I made, where I have used the words"back where we belong" well, to many times thats for sure.Now its time for me to really face up to what I never wanted too, but now know I must, just like you have to when your love for someone has gone. Not that mine has for my team, my club.
No, I need to face up to the fact, that now my club is not the same mighty Torquay it always was to me, my team is playing where it deserves to be, my team really is just a non league team. As Ant says, having no right to beat any other team in the BSP, just because I still had it In my head, we were still a big team.
Coming to terms at last, will really lower my expectations of my team, knowing that I can't expect it will win games, that a few years ago, I would have laughed if you said we would lose against, say a team like Histon.
I do know that the club has a board who wants to move the club forward, I really do not have the answers just why this season has started so badly, there must be many different reasons, many parts of the jigsaw, that some how don't seem to fit.
I did not go today, I really was on Saturday so looking forward to the game today. I had my reasons not to go, said I was not going and as a man of my word stuck to it.No matter how much effort the team put in, having to hear those boo's would have had me in tears, I know that, its just the way I am, It would be because I would feel that is so very sad, that the team I loved for 40 years was now a team, some seem fit to only boo at.
I was glad I did go today, I do not need the tears right now, but I really hope someone soon can get the team back on track, restore my love to what it once was, or do I really ask just to much.
My club was a football league club and was for 80 years, not always on the football coupon, due to Saturday night kick offs, but when we played away, I would cycle as a young lad into Newton from Buckland, to get the H.E at around 6pm as it would have all the results in it.
During my 40 odd years as a fan, we nearly went out of the league many times, a few times we needed to go cap in hand to the league, as at that time it was not automatic promotion from the conference. It always worked, but the last time it happened, I did not think the league was going to save us again, but they did.
Then we were saved only because the winning team from the conference, did not have a ground up to standard, just one more lucky escape, but even cats only have nine lives.
I know when the day came, that final whistle, blown by the ref, the day we lost our league status, I did not think I would stop crying. It was not the tears I had cried before at a football match, no those tears were so different. It was my first ever trip to the old wembley, watching two teams I had never seen play before, but that did not matter. It was the noise the atmosphere that just got to me so much, that the tears came rolling down my face.
Being a small man, I have always had to be able to stand up to people, show my strong side, so as not to let anyone think they could push me around and It works.
But at home I'm a joke, well you see I feel others pain so much,I only need to watch something sad on the TV and my wife shouts out to pass Dave the tissues. Its why I have been able to help so many people who have needed someone to talk to, someone to understand.
These tears were real bad tears, my club so very much deep in my heart was now a non league team, all those years supporting a proper league team now gone. The problem for me is that I don't think in my heart I have every really accepted that my team is non league, I still felt we were a big team (well bigger than Weymouth) and did not belong in the BSP and it would not be there very long.
How many posts have I made, where I have used the words"back where we belong" well, to many times thats for sure.Now its time for me to really face up to what I never wanted too, but now know I must, just like you have to when your love for someone has gone. Not that mine has for my team, my club.
No, I need to face up to the fact, that now my club is not the same mighty Torquay it always was to me, my team is playing where it deserves to be, my team really is just a non league team. As Ant says, having no right to beat any other team in the BSP, just because I still had it In my head, we were still a big team.
Coming to terms at last, will really lower my expectations of my team, knowing that I can't expect it will win games, that a few years ago, I would have laughed if you said we would lose against, say a team like Histon.
I do know that the club has a board who wants to move the club forward, I really do not have the answers just why this season has started so badly, there must be many different reasons, many parts of the jigsaw, that some how don't seem to fit.
I did not go today, I really was on Saturday so looking forward to the game today. I had my reasons not to go, said I was not going and as a man of my word stuck to it.No matter how much effort the team put in, having to hear those boo's would have had me in tears, I know that, its just the way I am, It would be because I would feel that is so very sad, that the team I loved for 40 years was now a team, some seem fit to only boo at.
I was glad I did go today, I do not need the tears right now, but I really hope someone soon can get the team back on track, restore my love to what it once was, or do I really ask just to much.
I do drink Newcastle brown, only two pints, as If I got there at 7pm and could get three down before closing time, anyone could take me home