I started supporting the club in the mid 90s, when I was about 10 years old.
I remember at that time hearing people talk about the Simod Cup, how it was such an important part of the club’s history etc. To a 10 year old, 8 years before felt impossibly long ago. Like a different generation, a different lifetime. An entirely different world. It really felt like those supporters were living in the past, that the recent devastation in the play off final wiped all of that away, and that it was a little weird to focus on history (which seemed like ages ago) to justify that we were a “proper club”.
And then I realised that it’s actually been a decade since the club was last in the Prem. I tell my own kids about the glory days of the 05-06 season and the results after that. About Coppell and McDermott. About cup runs. About the highs and lows, and yet excitement, of supporting the team at that time.
And it was twice as long ago as the Simod Cup win was when I first started following the club.
I’m not entirely sure of what I’m trying to get at. It’s a general feeling of ennui, of detachment from what has gone before while still trying to regain those days. I am now one of those dull middle aged men that bored me 30 years ago. In the end it’s just all a pointless distraction from the drudgery of our own self-loathing and the hatred of our daily lives, isn’t it? And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!