So, then. Another game at Theme Park KM, another loss. 1-0 this time, and of course it was the usual crappy goal to concede. Cue plenty of raised eyebrows again, not to mention the now-familiar sense of embarrassment when looking at our scoreline on SSN.
Yet for some reason, I also walked away a bit happier than I have done in previous debacles.
Maybe it was being demob happy? Or perhaps we saw our first glimpses of the future and final glimpses of the past?
For those wanting to read beyond the scoreline, it was a mixture of youngsters and those who appear to be contractually obliged to at least finish the game. Youth wise, we had Jack Turner in goal, Ryan Jackson as right back, and Matt Harmsworth came on up front. None of them looked any worse than those they’ve replaced.
In fact, Jackson got MOM, Turner made a great save, and Harmsworth certainly didn’t look any more of a lumbering giant than many others we’ve seen over the years. With the usual decent performances by Wellard and Kedwell, this could be filed under the “unlucky” category.
Last night, we actually tried to strike back. With a bit more luck, and a bit better rub of the green, this could have been a lot different. Unlike Grays and Barrow, we didn’t deserve to lose this.
But we did, and unfortunately, we found out why. Much if not most of this squad know they’re on their way out. We know that Elliott Godfrey is going, but some of the others too had a slight air of going through the motions. This is a squad that knows it has reached the end of the road, and is just getting through those last 2-3 games. It was rather telling that at the end, DK, Moore, Jackson, Wellard, BJ and Harmsworth were bunched together clapping the crowd off, whilst the others were on their own.
For the first time, I sense people are worried about next season. What we’re about to do is a massive, massive step, and there’s no guarantee it will work out. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the pre-season nerves we experienced in August 2009 are going to get even worse 12 months later.
Question is, should they?
Last night’s programme had a full length TB interview. There’s some interesting stuff here, but I will quote this bit :
Recently I spoke to John Still, the Dagenham & Redbridge manager, and we agreed that my squad have simply run out of steam in the past few weeks. He said that you don’t notice the difference between being full and part time until the later stages of the season
And with all due respect to our knee-jerkists, I value the views of a manager like Still over every single hysterical rant we’ve heard since last night 😉
I expect our recent form (lack thereof) has clouded our ability to take some perspective. Yes, some of what we’ve done has been pretty dire. Yes, some signings haven’t made the grade. And yes, at times we’ve looked relegation candidates. But there’s one word that describes our season as it really was.
Overachievement.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, we came into this season completely in the dark with what to expect. All of us. For us supporters, we didn’t know whether we were going to get gubbed each week (er…), how we would cope with proper football again, and indeed how we would cope with being a proper club with proper restrictions and proper setbacks again.
For the most part, I think we’ve come through that OK. Indeed, if I’m feeling patronising, we’ve handled that side better than expected. As fans, we’ve overachieved ourselves.
But it’s the playing side I’m focusing on. When we got rid of the likes of Tom Davies, of JG and Tony Finn to name but three, we were building ourselves up for a Conference side that would have gone into the playoffs.
At least, for a team in 2007.
The trouble is, or was, that our management itself was rebuilding in the dark a fair bit too. If you look back at past SW19 scribings, you may see links to the Conference table in 2002 or 1999, for reasons of reference. Here’s what it looked like in TB’s last season at Aldershot. Anyone who watched Conference games back then, would know that we’d be on a par with Exeter or Burton. Legitimately, too, because the real big money hadn’t quite permeated through. We’ve learnt the hard way that it’s not like that any more.
A good example of this knowledge gap is Paul Lorraine. When we signed him in the close season, all of us thought that he would be one of the rocks at centre-back. But he’s now unfortunately proved to be a liability, and he wasn’t much better last night. Him leaving would have been considered a major surprise this time last year, but rather inevitable twelve months later…
We think we’ve done poorly because we really didn’t have a clue what to expect from the Conference in 2010. And yes, we’ve made a couple of mistakes. No point in saying what they are, we all know them by now. The key is not to make them, but to learn from them and not to repeat them again.
To outside observers though, we are a part-time outfit competing in a full-time environment. We have exceeded expectations. Our fans believe we’re collapsing, reading around opposition viewpoints, it’s usually “they’re part time, what do you expect?”. Nobody would have raised any eyebrows at us going full time, in fact they’re probably more surprised we weren’t in the first place.
This is why we shouldn’t take the complaints that we’re “breaking the promise” that we were going to keep this group of youngsters together to build a team up seriously. Bottom line is, this particular set of players will not take us any further. If they could, we’d be keeping most of them on. And I’d rather we recognise that and take remedial action rather than just plough on and give ourselves all sorts of headaches for next season. Where it really will end being a “waste” of a season.
Last night, I felt a bit like I did after we went out of the RP playoffs to Bromley. The phrase “end of the road” is an emotive one, but it’s one I’m finding myself using more and more. Back then, we had a new manager and a brand new ethos as a result. Next few months will end up being as radical as that fateful period, perhaps even more so.
As Gateshead starts becoming more and more unlikely for your editor (hint to certain person : if you change your mind… 😉 ), I have to end on a comment I heard last night that we’ve gone “backward”. Losing again can make you feel like that, but when you think about it, we’ve gone much further forward in one year than we have in the previous eight…