If I knew the location of Sirius then I could confirmed these are the Dog Days of summer. Cheltenham’s schools are emptying and the traffic is thinning out. Last week’s heat reminded us that we really should turn our backs on town life until September. But it seems like the 2009-10 season is beginning to stir. Its two months too early. Can’t it wait? I’m not ready for it.
Cheltenham Town’s Whaddon Road stadium is reassuringly welcoming (even Leeds fans came over all polite when they visited) but I can’t face returning to my few square feet of terrace just yet. The traumas of last season have hardly faded. The statistics are not worth repeating; we were relegated second from bottom of Football League One. That’s enough detail.
Those who develop an attachment to a successful football club they only see on pay-for TV are frequently criticised. This fails to recognise the potentially painful alternative. They’re only protecting themselves. Supporting a lower league team can hurt. It’s on the door-step, it doesn’t cost much to watch and Whaddon Road is rarely full. You can just be a casual user. Only weekends, nothing serious. But get hooked and the prospects are grim.
You then mix with Chelsea and Manchester United fans who say they’ve had a good season (and they have). They never saw their team up close but they can still feel the elation that goes with identifying with a successful club. At Whaddon Road you do get to see football up close; very close. It’s immediate, you hear the swearing, the huffing and puffing, and the smack of a late tackle. But the elation has to be savoured. It’s not a rare thing but let’s just say they don’t squander it. The highs are better that way but the lows are grizzly; although the gallows humour much enhanced.
Martin - 'Mad Dog' or 'just a bit eccentric and uncontained' - Allen swept through the club like a new broom on acid after the dismal start to last season. The come down took its time and establishing some kind of new personality came too late to save us from our prospective visit to the League Two clinic. It was never boring. The football was better than I saw the last time we were in League Two (feel free to disagree) and at times it was better than the previous season in League One; although then we were only saved by the financial collapse of other clubs. But this time it was nearly our turn for a visit from the administrators.
This season it’ll be different. It won’t get to me. I can handle it. Dream on.
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