In tribute to Rob Dunkley

Just as we have reached the summit

We are plunged back into darkness

From which we thought we had left behind


Just as we have come together

So you have broken away;

Broken hearts and memories.


But though they are shattered

Though they are fragmented with grief

We will remember, clearly


A vision of dedication.

A man of every fact.

Intoxicated with knowledge


But the fact that is official

Is you are gone too soon

Away from us, away from home.


A train to another platform.

A game that we can only mourn.

But what I am pleased for,


Is at your last you saw us reach for the stars,


And now we hope you are too.


R.I.P mate. Thoughts with your friends & family at this sad time x

You'll never take our heart

I don't remember much about my first game at Sixfields. I think we were playing Cambridge, but it might have been Colchester. I think it was 1-1, but it may have been 0-0. I just know it was a typically drab lower-league affair which makes it virtually impossible to distinguish from so many of the other similar stodgy slog-fests.

Nostalgia has a funny way of making things seem glorious in its hazy past-light, but the truth is that I remember that moment not because of the feast of football on offer, but because I became nourished by the sense of community around me, because I had my first taste of how dirty and grubby and gritty watching something in the flesh can be.

Those might not sound like attractive adjectives, but the moment I put down the glossy sheen of pristine prints in my 'Match' magazine, the moment I turned off the television, took off my quite clearly fake Manchester United top, and let my Mum lead me by the hand toward something real - it was from that moment that I could never again let go of what gripped me so preciously. It wasn't long before I was asking for a Northampton Town kit, and the day I unwrapped it under the tree was a day I'll never forget. I put on a badge, I wore an identity. I showed off a genuine claret-soul and it fit so perfectly that I knew I'd always belong.

There are people I know that don't like sport. Some of them ask me what I find to love about football? I understand - with some of the goings on in the modern-world of egotistical egomaniacs - even I feel alienated by some of the answers. But then I close my eyes and I try to remember the heart.

The heart is that kid, who can't concentrate in school because he's thinking about that evening's glamorous affair against the might of Hereford. That kid, who's trying to emulate his hero Ali Gibb on the playground by running the ball smoothly along the wing and then producing a cross to absolutely bloody no-one, instead of attempting a cheeky Cantona chip like those who just didn't-quite-get-it around him. That kid, who looked down on those dizzyingly bright lights from the hill and could taste the magic in the air, could see what many generations had passed on before him - not necessarily a love for beautiful football but a craving to belong, to grow up and be part of a pride that felt personable. To share this bond with those around you. No longer strangers, but now united in a common understanding.

That heart of essentially wanting to forget our loneliness is what made me really love it - that heart that still beats strongly even now before kick-off because singing with friends is still such a spectacle. Emptying lungs, emptying all the s**t that life can throw at you and just remembering to escape together. Everyone has their different s**t - but the Cobblers have always been there to get me through. Through s**t like losing my identity as a teenage-carer and caring for nothing much around me. Through s**t like losing that hand that once held me so preciously and staring at an empty seat beside me. We all go through s**t. We all lose things we love, but the Cobblers is one thing I cannot bare to lose. They have been with me through all of it, through many agonising moments and many of euphoria. I cannot now, remember my life without them. It's precisely because they heal my loneliness and give me a place to call my home.

There have been moments - most notably throughout the Cardoza era where I have felt that comfort tested - where some of that love began to dwindle toward apathy. Perhaps it was the promises, the ridiculousness of a 5 year-plan toward the top when all I'd really known before had felt like a lifetime of averageness. But that was just fine. That was just my team.

There have been moments of horrific hardship on the pitch, when it felt like the trapdoor below was opening up and begging us to fall into its doom-mongering depths. Looking back now, I realise those words are overly-dramatic. We might have been desperately crap, but it was just a game of football. Some you win, some you lose. Sometimes you keep on losing and its rubbish but it's all part of the ritual.

Then there have been the last few months - frozen in this terrible, nightmare collection of moments and memories, suspended in the disbelief that everything that Northampton Town stood for could be just so cruelly taken away. Just like that.

The convoluted web of lies and deceit that has eaten away at those feelings, the ghastliness of greed that has threatened to shatter our sheer existence - normally those are things that would make me write, normally those are things that would force me to act. Yet, somehow I have found the idea - that words could do justice to an ever expanding world of worry - an idea out of reach, because we have all felt like we are flailing desperately without knowing whether we had anything left to hold onto.

What's more - understanding the scale of the thing has been beyond my comprehension. How could a little club like us attract such massive, catastrophic corruption? Why would anyone, when finally given what they had asked for, choose to throw everything away - to threaten to throw us all into the shocking realisation that we might be about to cease being for good.

I could go over the insanity of certain individuals 'misplacing' millions of pounds of public money, I could go over every intricate detail in the wicked plot to bring us down upon our knees. As revelations have come (and continue to come) to light it has felt more like the script from a film than the script written by a fourth-tier football club, but all these things are now finally being documented elsewhere. I am sick of it all, I am sick of standing in the rubble of rumours - where we all knew things were collapsing but no-one quite seemed to know how or why. Now is not the time though, to talk about how we almost crumbled. Now is the time to remember our foundations - to remember why we survived and how we can strive to stand tall once again.

So I say sod those horrible months of depression, let us talk about what we learnt, how strongly we stood together and how much more resistant the force will be if anyone dares f**k with our home again in the future. This is going to be quite some rebuild.

It was a thread on a messageboard that began to slowly uncover the sordid truth. Yes, we can look back with regret that only a couple of us dared to ask difficult questions, but the truth is that though we must never be such a soft-touch again, it's also true to say that this story has been driven by the fans. Whilst the media may make the noises now, it was some diligent detective work that started to uncover the real murkiness of this mystery: where the hell is this stand we were given so much money to build?

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank all those that took it upon themselves to sniff out the awful stench of sliminess with their consistently staggering research. I would like to thank all of those who expanded on the information with legal or financial knowledge - who helped us draw a bigger picture of exactly what was going on whilst we were looking the other way. I would like to thank everyone that helped out with the protests, be it volunteering, committing cash to help us shout a little louder, or simply those that took part. Despite the cynics, you were proved right and you did your bit to help publicise our perilous plight.

I would like to thank the Trust. There are tough questions that still need to be asked of how it was our fans became such a feeble voice, but for now let us rejoice in how they have acted with so much downright dedication to help us through these sleepless nights. The hours upon hours that you have all given up, the sacrifice and the steeliness to make sure that we still have a club to support - those are things that I could not be more grateful for and things I hope I can say I've done in the future if the need arises. Because we are stronger, when we trust each other to work as one.

I would like to thank all the supporters therefore, because the unity has been unbelievable. How dare you try and attack us, how dare you! Because this is how we respond. In unison; with chants; at matches; on social media. We have been anywhere and everywhere in the pursuit of keeping this club alive, and in turn I have been humbled by the support of others - others who share simply a common desire to tell owners in it for the good of themselves where to piss off to - others who wish football to be ultimately in the hands of the people who keep it alive. Us.

The biggest thanks though, with the obvious exception of Kelvin Thomas for helping save us, must go to Chris Wilder, his majestic management and all the staff and players that have not just kept us going, but have somehow worked through the darkest days to help us see a hopeful dawn, blazing with the promise that the sun will rise again. Some of those people have gone unpaid for weeks upon weeks. Some of those people have kept their head down when they could have given up, have probably struggled to feed their families yet have refused to starve us of what we hold dearest. My God, I hate the overuse of this word sometimes but you are all bloody heroes, at least for today.

That sheer will to carry on has bled from the backrooms to the front-of-house where we have somehow risen to almost the very summit. It's absolutely astonishing. Normally to have a degree of sporting success stability is a key factor. Well bloody hell, we are making up our own rulebook right now. We have done this because we have never, in my time supporting NTFC, felt so totally together. When the team came over to celebrate the brilliance of the Coventry success, it just felt different, somehow. It felt like we had all been there that day to provide a frank expression of what it had meant to us, it felt like they knew and they really did care back. And then I started blubbing.

This is like a terrible speech, where I thank everyone in overlong overtures of emotion but I don't really care. Because we have so many undiscovered notes left to play in the future, so many sweet melodies to create on and off the pitch. Because, finally, oh heck finally we can concentrate on football once again. It's great that we're winning, I hope it continues. I hope we win the league.

But not even that.

Still I can walk through the town centre that I sometimes despise but is unequivocally mine, and I can sing through the streets that I have always known. Still I can look at that photograph - standing proud next to the Christmas tree with my shirt ridiculously tucked into my shorts in an uncool-kind-of-lower-league way, and I can think about all those people that we've lost. Here's to you, Brian Lomax. Here's to you, Mum. Here's to all the generations that now can sleep peacefully - safe in the knowledge that we, Northampton Town Football Club, will never die.

Here's to many hundreds of years more of it.

Here's to a future bright, always full of claret and white.

Here's to our still-beating hearts.