John Walker
I’ll be baffled, neigh appalled if your call to arms doesn’t include us losing 3-0 at home to Colchester.
Oh, let us not be fooled, the game was shit. It was, dare I now say, a typical Cowley performance in which we hoped for spirit and endeavour to take a tired squad through to victory. Victory didn’t matter though, did it? We were already champions and had already got the crown we richly deserved. Scratch that, the crown we just about deserved.
Had Bury not imploded, had MK Dons not been so dour, had Mansfield not poured too much money into the pit, maybe we’d have seen more of a challenge, but in fact we dominated the top spot from September onwards. We weren’t always great, we were very rarely scintillating, but we won the league. As far as highlights go, they surely don’t get much higher, nor lighter, than that.
I’m from a generation that remembers John Ward, Big Perce and the rest of those legends of ’76. We didn’t win every game that season either, but when the time came to be crowned everyone stayed and celebrated. When the time came in 2019, some of the supporters were already halfway down the High Street angry we’d lost 3-0 in a dead rubber. What a shame, for them more than anything.
However, to finally see the ghosts of ’76 given a modern-day comparison pleased me no end. Did it compare with the title win of 2017 for joy, elation and achievement? No, probably not. What it did do was usher in the new age and that is enough to make it my highlight of the year.