A Football Season Review

And what an excellent season it was.......in the end!!!
For those of you who don't know I'm a rather keen follower of Dagenham and Redbridge FC, so this season will stand out in my memory for an extremely long time, all the way to my grave in fact.
I remember early on in the season in August, watching us thrash Shrewsbury 5-0, a fantastic day, and the atmosphere at the club despite it being very early doors, everyone believing perhaps the unthinkable was thinkable, a pub team from essex up in league 1!!
We managed to stay top of the table for a fair distance, whilst I was able to visit many away grounds due to my university location, which included at the time exciting trips to places like Macclesfield on a cold Saturday in November, I guarantee right now you're wishing you were there too. Everything went downhill the day I went all the way to Dagenham for our top of the table clash with Rochdale, only to feel disgruntled not just at the scoreline, but overhearing the Dale fans in the crowd walking back to the station saying 'they were bloody crap' etc. You might have guessed funnily enough, Dale are now not amongst my favoured outfits.
After losing that game, we went to pieces for quite an alarming number of fixtures, and then came the return trip to Wales....sorry I meant Shrewsbury! The match was nothing entertaining, the banter with the Shrews fans though got quite heated, for those not in the know there's little love loss between us, including many entertaining chants of 'You fat bastard', all completely relevant I might add!
Following on from that came an eventful trip to Bury in March, where I ran close to being stabbed (probably!!) when asked by a tough looking guy from about 5 inches at Manchester Piccadilly, 'Is this the Bury train,' in the scousest of scouse accents. This lead to a moment of silence when I was frantically hoping he didn't think I was deliberately ignoring him, get pissed off and utilise any item of weaponary he most likely had in his possession! I eventually made Gigg Lane you'll be pleased to here (otherwise of course I couldn't tell the tale!), unlike most Daggers fans it has to be said, a classic turnout of about 30, and those who didn't missed an incredibly entertaining game despite it finishing 0-0.
Once the end of the season drew close, 3 games to go, we'd hauled ourselves back into playoff contention and a trip to sunny(!) Morecambe was the order of the day. So I got a train at some ludicrous hour of the morning, about 9, all the way and even went out onto the beach for a walk, I maintain one can't visit a seaside town without doing so! A good fish and chips for lunch again seemed the order of the day, seens as Morecambe is a fishing port. The match was pretty poor lets not beat about the bush, well for us, they thoroughly deserved to win, but it was probably a blessing in disguise, you'll see why shortly!
Following a win the next Saturday at home to Hereford we just needed to beat already relegated Darlington to make the playoffs (Y)!! For me though, another train at about half 4 in the morning to get there, ok I exaggerate slightly, but with the time I had to see the sights of Darlo I was rather impressed. Great turnout from the Daggers boys, about 500 of us there with our beachballs (no doubt bought in Morecambe!), but unfortunately the wind kept blowing them out of our section, epic disappointment. The game went good, Jon Nurse opened the scoring after about half an hour, cue pandemonium in the stands with much hugging and random screaming and the very sporting Darlo fans stayed to congratulate us and our players at the end on our achievements.
So we're in the playoffs, and who do we get to play, why it's our wife Morecambe, luckily for us though we popped in 6 of the best at home to make playoff history and then went all the way to Wembley with a 2-1 loss away. Not much to say here, except the Morecambe fans are a very sporting bunch and all Daggers are now honourary Morecambe supporters from now on, and I apparently made in onto SkySports, but haven't managed to see it......:(
Eventually, the big day comes, amid much excitement from the fans, I reckon the number of posts on the forum multiplied by about a thousand times the week leading up. The day for me didn't start well, upon changing trains to get to Wembley Stadium I ended up on a train that didn't stop as the damn departure board obviously had changed before a late train left the platform. So I ended up having to jump on the first train out of London, to most likely avoid being given the Death penalty for ticket evasion, and ended up passing straight through Wembley Stadium the other way! Eventually I got to the pub where clearly Wembley days is their profit maker, with hundreds of Daggers fans there enjoying rather reasonable weather, for a change. Once 3 o'clock came the match got underway, and to avoid writing this blog entry from now till Christmas, if you're interested just go watch the highlights they'll be somewhere. Anyway we won 3-2, and now we are in league 1!!!!
As many have said it's an amazing achievement for a club with so little money, culminating possibly in the erection of a brand spanking new 10,000 stand! This just leaves me to say that John Still is manager of the decade, stand and salute Sir John.