From the other side of the world, the party at the Abbey Stadium transported me back to my own end-of-season joy as a teenagerIt is fascinating what football can do to you. Twenty minutes after the full-time whistle had blown in the final games of the League One season I was alone in silence in a tiny radio studio at 11.30pm in Melbourne with tears in my eyes watching Cambridge United players being held aloft by fans on the Abbey Stadium turf after they had avoided relegation.I looked at those fans, running on the pitch in random directions like a mob of meerkats released from a pen. Going this way and that, hugging strangers, not really knowing where to go...
FA Cup draw finally delivered for my beloved U’s and revives memories of when Newcastle (briefly) lived in our shadowFor lower-league supporters the FA Cup third-round draw is often more exciting than many of your actual games. I naturally yearn for the 80s simplicity of a velvet bag, Graham Kelly, Ted Croker and Bert Millichip broadcasting from a broom cupboard in total silence. But even on the One Show, with fans awkwardly moved on and off set in some sort of Weekend At Bernie’s zombie tribute it still offers hopes and dreams you just can’t get from Gillingham away.This season it was a scaled-down affair in a Wembley corporate box with Seema Jaswal in charge of the FA Cup winners...
Potential upsets, Premier League clubs needing to take it seriously and old foes meeting after taking diverging pathsSwindon and Manchester City were regular combatants in the 1990s, meeting in the second tier and during Swindon’s one season in the Premier League, 1993-94. Friday’s visit to the County Ground will be a first meeting in 20 years. On 5 January 2002, former Swindon man Kevin Horlock scored the second in a 2-0 home win at Maine Road. The years since have seen the clubs move in radically different trajectories, and they now operate on different planets. Swindon arrested a slump with a 5-2 defeat of Northampton on New Year’s Day, and lie in the League Two play-off positions. The club have...
Fan and former under-eights coach Mark Bonner is overseeing unlikely promotion push at free-scoring League Two clubIt is a romantic rise that has the hallmarks of a homegrown hero making his name on Football Manager but, whereas that is a world of fantasy, Mark Bonner is calling the shots in the dugout having earned his stripes at his boyhood club. He started coaching Cambridge United’s under-eights almost two decades ago before roles as academy manager, first-team coach, assistant manager and spells in caretaker charge paved the way to becoming the head coach.“Growing up in the area and having been a supporter as a kid, it is a very unusual [story] – I know that and I don’t take that for...
For many fans of lower league sides the best case is nothing happens in the new season, but developments at Gigg Lane show us that our clubs may not always be thereIt’s 5 August 2017. It’s hard to tell how many Cambridge United fans have made the trip to Exeter City for the opening game of the season. The records say 318. It didn’t seem that many at the time.Exeter have chucked us in the main stand in the corner – not because they thought our ultras would make it feel like a U’s home game if they put us behind the goal, but because the away end is a building site. Just some hoardings, some sand and a digger....