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.

Into Battle.

I was sitting in a pub in Liverpool Street, and something happened that made me remember.

I got chatting to a young Cobbler called Alex, who it transpired had just lost his Mum to cancer earlier in the week. He hadn't been sure whether he'd make it to Dagenham, but using his Mum's old Northampton Town shirt as inspiration to shield his pain, he bravely decided to step out into this crushing new world.

It took me back to when the same happened to me in late 2009, and though I wrote about it at the time and though I received some phenomenal messages of love and support, there have been a lot of moments when football has never really felt the same. It takes a long time to recover from losing your hero, from turning the seat next to you from a haunted one into something that breathes and roars with the passion of life again. 

What I really remembered though on Saturday, was not an identical kind of emptiness, but a mutual kind of strength that comes from having another family to help you through. It is not fair to compare a football game to the trauma and terror of a hospital ward, but being part of a collective, being absolutely together with people you don't really know is the kind of medicine that gives us faith to carry on. We injected ourselves with some kind of special spirit on Saturday, and all I could see amongst empty pint glasses and totally confused tourists, were hearts that were full to the brim with pride and passion - of what is it to follow a football team and to follow each other in turn.

Maybe you'll call me crazy, but a part of me felt like that claret longing bled into every single player until they couldn't help but be absolutely magnificent when the time came to fight. It has felt like a fight for me for the past few years - a fight to start enjoying life again - a fight to start enjoying walking through that turnstile alone. A fight, sitting there and watching us play like absolute fucking morons. We have been so bereft of ourselves, so absolutely on a downward spiral toward bloody averageness instead of the bond of brotherhood that being part of this should always bring. Anfield aside, I can confidently say that football has become a chore of habit rather than the frank expression of celebration that I once gasped in as a youngster.

When I saw Alex walking out of the ground on Saturday, his smile lit up a season of such desperate nothingness, that there was my highlight right there. Because yes, it helped that we won, it helped that one of our own had captured those playing field dreams that we all had and still hope to have, but what really made a difference was every one being there for every one else, and us all, knowingly or not, being there for him. When Ivan dared to flick the ball up and become a performing acrobat, time was suspended in that glorious moment of disbelief, where suddenly we allow ourselves to be free, where suddenly we allow ourselves to embrace a thousand grown men and women as if they are a part of us.

Even if the unthinkable were to happen on Saturday and we sunk to our lowest ever depths, I would still find comfort in the joys and agony of being part of this. But we must reconnect, we must close our eyes and push away the Johnson's of regret and the Boothroyd's of blandness, and we must, absolutely must remember how to have some fun again. How to feel again. 

So, for fucks sake, get your voice on, get your scarf out, and swing it about like you just don't care even though you know you do more than anything. Claret is our colour and it will be on show like never before tomorrow, but it is the sheer nakedness of our souls on display when we want something more than them that will blind Oxford into sorrowful submission tomorrow. 

We have never been a non-league club, and whether we are by my next blog post will ultimately depend on whether some guy kicks the ball into the back of some net. But the point is, we are a tribe that can influence someone who has absolutely lost their everything, and therefore we are a tribe that can influence whether we give a fuck about staying up or not. And we really, really do. Because we are not meant for this.

Come with me tomorrow, join with me tomorrow and we will do this. Prepare your lungs for battle, prepare Pat Gavin for the reception of a hero and maybe, just maybe, another miracle of an arse will affect the trajectory of another ball and help lift us off the bottom of this heap of misery we've been suffering under.

Come on the Teyn.

#gavinitlarge

Watching from afar.

As I looked down from the hill a few short weeks ago as we faced Bury, it was hard to feel anything at all.

I had a train to catch before the final whistle blew and perhaps the hardest thing was how easy it was to decide not to be another click through the turnstile. Instead there I sat, an attendance of one in my own private box of isolation, a recovering addict who'd withdrawn sufficiently but who needed that little shot of something to see the day through.

So from a prescribed position of safety, I stared blankly on at the family I once shared a bond with, and even as the heart was ripped out of them again and again, even as the bodies probably slumped gutlessly over - it was really okay, to be honest. The only half of the pitch I could see was the only half I identified with. A barren stretch of nothingness where cowards ceased to venture and attacks failed to grow - the opposition's half.

I left at half-time, at least, I clambered from a grassy verge, my football club now reduced to a distant numbness and the North Stand now a cover for the once predictable pain that was finally out of my sight. The journey to not-really-giving-a-fuck-any-more was almost complete, it was just a wonder I hadn't booked a one-way ticket away sooner to pursue a relationship I did actually still care about.

Football fans are fickle but for good reason - we ride together on a wave of emotion and climactic moments, of giddy goals and disgraceful decisions. Through a sporting lens, life is suddenly magnified a thousand times over and presented in front of our fervent eyes, all the passion of what it is to be alive is suddenly condensed into ninety minutes of glorious escapism from the mundane and monotonous. If I am rational and diplomatic away from a football ground - then I am biased as hell when on the inside - I am what society sometimes doesn't allow me to be or I don't allow myself, but by bloody God I am part of a community that cares.

Somewhere along the line, I started retreating back into my shell. I started dragging all the worries of my week with me to Sixfields, and all that we created was an ampitheatre of anxiety, a place too familiarly like the outside world. All we got back were eleven fearful shadows, or one-hundred-and-three if you count the Gary Johnson (error) era. It may be difficult to quantify, but there are moments when you step into a football ground and you just know that there is a special feeling, you just know that you can help carry them over the line. What we have suffered through, particularly since Wembley, but mostly ever since we wilted pathetically away at Leeds not long after dreaming of the Championship, has felt like one of the worst spells that I can remember and it's no wonder its reduced us to this absolute apathy.

This season has been coming and coming to get us for a long time now, and whilst we have just about gasped for breath at the vital moment previously, after the Bury game I rationally and diplomatically looked at it, and thought we were finally screwed. More to the point, we almost certainly deserved it. Then, something curious happened.

I don't know why but I walked up to Sixfields on the afternoon of the Burton game, and I started to believe. I walked into the ground and this time something did firmly click into place, because I could feel that sense of belief beginning first, as just a piece of card on an empty seat. What had seemed a cheap gimmick then started to spread into something more productive, as clap banners battered my ears, cynicism slowly being replaced by the thunderous beating of positivity amongst the claret faithful. If I heard those pesky things every week I would probably halve the average attendance with a shotgun, but in that moment of need, we needed a tool to repair us and by some kind of miracle, I think it started to work.

There was an admirable air of patience, the man at the back of the West who loves to shout 'GET IT FORWARD!' at every irritating opportunity was drowned out by a sense that we were driving forward in unison, for the first time in a long time. We were tenacious, tough-tackling and together. Even if the Burton goalkeeper may as well have been sponsored by the Northampton clown, it was a start. We could survive. We really could.

Looking back now, I think that Bury game finally awakened us from a slumber. We took a good look inside ourselves, as fans and players and decided it wasn't good enough, and it quite simply hadn't been good enough for a while. Instead of moping inwardly we began to look outward again at each other as we committed to a single goal. Not too big to go down and certainly not too good, but too shaken by years of depression and too damn proud of what this club can be and what it should be: a football league club for now and for our children yet to come.

To be continued...

The Sound of Silence

Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again.

Cobblers fans are used to trips into the night. When you've lived a mostly quiet, unassuming existence on the very edge of the horizon, black humour becomes a second nature - you have to learn to laugh at yourself when you're just not very good - whilst the occasional glimpses into the light prove all the more satisfying. Sometimes we remember the time when we rose magnificently with the sun, only for it to scorch our sensitive skins as we sunk just as spectacularly, knowing nothing could survive but the distant memories of a quickly-fading sunset.

It was fun, so they say, but we are not born to grace such dizzy heights. We are born into grumbles and goalkeeper fumbles, into ploughed fields and yet more sodding loan deals. It is sometimes remote, nomadic. There is nothing quite as removed from the riches at the top than Accrington on a blustery Tuesday night. Yet there is nothing quite so healing as looking round at the other hundred freezing souls and knowing you have travelled a thousand roads together. A loss is a shared pain, a win an inevitable dream of glory. It can be so fucking miserable that only they would understand. It can be so fan-fucking-tastic that only they could get the intensity of those special moments. So rare, so meaningful.

So, together you share as a family. Nothing shakes the community spirit like the loss of one of your own, yet the awful news of Saturday was a rallying call, a cry to help a broken family; a longing to remember the sadly departed with a silence that sings to them. Supporters support each other first.

We must separate a game from the gut-wrenching moments of human loss, yet as I write this, I feel like I am losing something that matters. Not so much the players or the penalties, but the passion and the places we have lived and lit up together. They are falling not like a sunset of memories, but like a journey into a fast-approaching black hole where everything is forgotten in an instant. Suspended in terrible timelessness, the face of the clock seems to tick for others but for us it stares blankly back. We are too gripped by the fate of the inevitable to do anything about it.

Instead of reaching out to feel the familiar touch of family, we have fallen into a deathly silence that controls us. As I write, it is 24 days and counting since we've been falling. Perhaps it is longer, it hasn't really felt enjoyable for a while but there's always been you to reach out to. Now I reach out but so are you, limbs flailing limply through empty weightlessness, no direction to head but into nothingness.

The only thing that grips us is the feeling that no-one gives a fuck about us anymore. Even Andy King is falling, admitting that the strain is getting too much. The only certainty uncertainty, and whether you like the slightly bullish bloke or not, you have to have sympathy that his day-to-day contract is taking him down with us.

I have had a huge amount of respect for our chairman but the current lack of anything is eerie, as if he'd rather be back on holiday than on our trip to the trapdoor. For fucks sake, David, do something, do bloody anything, just stop the feeling of grieving and self-pity that is swallowing us up. Our club is not dead, a visit to the conference needn't be a visit to oblivion but at least show some balls and act like we have a future. The irony of your insufferable wait to redevelop is that now you finally have the tools in place, everything that truly matters is crumbling all around you. Us. Your fanbase.

Find a direction to go in. Personally, I am sick of short-term solutions to long-term apathy and cannot fathom some people's desire to appoint a Bore-royd mark two. If we are really heading into non-league make plans for it yes, but how about risking a chance at survival? It needs someone on the way up to halt our downward trajectory, it needs someone with ambitions to be a success no matter the level.

Non-league, league, Champions league. Winners are still winners. Don't treat what is beneath you with disdain when we are almost there inside our heads. Appoint a Wilkin or a Burr. Give us someone who can budget for a victory, who has knowledge of what it is that can make football fun again. Just please, don't leave it any longer.

We may have twenty-odd games to save ourselves, but every day that silence falls feels like another million battles lost, the battle to save the heart of our followers. Don't lose us. Without us there is nothing left. Stop us from falling.

Make some God damn noise.

Please, just Bury him.

Here's a joke for you. Why did Aidy Boothroyd cross the road?

He didn't. He looked both ways, put one foot cautiously forward, then saw a Skoda was approaching on the very edge of the horizon and nervously flinched back on to the pavement. 'Sorry team, the traffic lights are a mile or two down the road but I just don't think it's safe to cross here.'

When the players finally arrived at Blundell Park, they had blundered a short hop across the road from the coach in favour of a bloody long walk. 'Mandela himself would have approved boys!' No-one laughed. It was wholly inappropriate. Not to mention the fact it wasn't freedom approaching, but the kind of footballing prison where feet are kept away from ball at all possible cost.

As the minute's applause to one of our greatest thundered around the surprisingly calm North Sea sky, so the only storm brewing were the clouds of negativity steadily gathering in Boothroyd's mind, impairing his increasingly robotic view. It is an away match. Must. Not. Play. Two. Upfront. Must. Proceed. With. Caution. And so, like a dalek itself he exterminated Clive Plattinho with the kind of cold, calculated efficiency that comes from someone totally unable to see outside of their own warped views. He later said he was saving Platt. Saving him from scoring a rare fucking goal, perhaps? Or the unlikely scenario of him still being alive come the end of the season if he spends too many minutes on a grass playing field.

The Mariners are a league club, a decent club, and they will escape the grimness of the thing that lies below eventually, but yesterday they were there and maybe would have remained below their station if we hadn't given them a free ticket to the potential riches of the next round. We didn't so much as show them respect, more bowed down as submissive playthings, trousers at our feet ready for our punishment. It doesn't seem to matter who we play or who is fit, our philosophy away from home comforts conforms to the same level of stupidity every single sodding time. 'Come get us. We're waiting. We'll try and hold out for as long as possible. We'll try. But secretly, we enjoy it. God, yes. Stick one in the net for us. Stick it in hard!'

Hard as he tries, he just cannot change. More leopard than lizard, more absolute and total joylessness for our intrepid and faithful followers. Not that there are many of them left now. Soon we'll have more players than away fans, as Aidy pisses another few grand of the chairman's hard earned cash up the wall. Another short-term solution to try and fix a long time problem. Him.

Lo and behold we nearly kept the tidal surge at bay as Aidy finally acted, bringing on the tree to try and help us branch forward. It did not work. You can change a formation but an attitude remains more stubborn, and soon we were sinking, shaking and eventually shocked. Not that you could call it a shock, despite a valiant attempt by the papers to find romance where there was none. It was predictable, inevitable, boring. Another loveless night spent trying to work out a doomed relationship; the absolute refusal to adapt to one another's needs.

Wembley was not a one-off. It was a warning.

We need to act. Act now whilst we are still rational, still communicating enough with each other to admit the sheer levels of frustration pumping away in our claret hearts. We are on the brink of something. Blame him if you must, but our chairman is committed and passionate, which is why he's understandably unnerved by the prospect of yet another fresh start. Listen to us, Mr. Cardoza. We appreciate all that you've done and regret all that you haven't - yet ultimately it is you who pays for what is squandered. We might scrape a point at Gigg Lane, we might grind our way to a few more thrilling Accringtonesque home performances. We may pull ourselves out of the fire and into the distinct mediocrity we've felt all along. This is not that time.

This is the time for some purpose, some planning - something that lasts beyond yourself, even. You have the keys ready to a shiny new home, we shall no doubt smile at the freshness of paint, the quality of seat, the pride of something that gleams. But materials are immaterial if you don't build the right foundations, if your legacy is nothing more than a perfect property. We require some balls, some bravery, some bite back. Aidy Boothroyd is a nice fella, a good honest Yorkshireman but he does not stand for a future that should be vibrant and colourful.

He is outdated, out-thought and out the door if you can just see what we are now seeing. Over and over, his strategy is safe and the same, prehistoric methodology stuck on repeat. I like him, I like what he did, but I'm beginning to loathe the football, the lack of it, the sheer lifelessness that the onset of caution has brought upon us.

Build a product of patience and practice, of flexibility and imagination, why not a manager of ideas instead of the same old creative black hole that seeps downwards, into the cracks. Into us all.
Look to below, look to above, look to wherever you have to for inspiration but first you must look honestly into the mirror and ask yourself this:

Is this really the best we can be?

Start and start again

As Aidy sipped his warm cocoa of comfort, slipped on his cosy pyjamas and crawled cautiously into his cocoon last night, he stopped for a second to stroke his crisp, mighty-clean sheet, the first signs of whites in quite a while. A smile crept over him as in an instant he was sound asleep, snug and satisfied with his day of endeavour.

Meanwhile the rest of us sat up stiffly - once upon a time it was anxiety keeping us awake - now it's just thumb-twiddling boredom, a total desire for any form of entertainment to soften our weekly grind. The problem is, Aidy f*cking loves the grind, the football factory, the production line of sweat that eventually produces results. At least, it's supposed to.

This point against a maddeningly average Morecambe may have been brave and 'valiant' in the cold winter months following Johnson's genocidal era, but not now. Boothroyd proved with outstanding frequency that he could hit the defrost button, but just when we were ready to mix into the melting pot of contenders, he's gone and changed the ingredients - and the only heat is now on him. Whilst Wembley confirmed the need to add a little spice to the slightly bland base, instead he decided to start from scratch without a clear recipe, but with the distinct suggestion that he wanted to prove his doubters wrong. Stick to what you know, son.

Last season was a really-quite-dull affair for an almost promoted one, but at least it brought stability, unity and even the beginnings of belief. Boothroyd is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get straight-forward decent Yorkshireman, so trying to change into something flashier has not gone down well in the fashionless football world that is League Two. It almost seemed like he was trying to insert buzz words in the summer sun, of 'technicians' and 'quality', of 'proper footballers' instead of whatever he thought he had before.

Those words don't suit him well, and we are now caught in a strange world of not-quite-being-anything, with a midfield of not-quite arsonists and not-quite artists, where the only triangles that form between them hail from Bermuda.

Carter - the not-quite making it at the top level and not-quite giving a sh*t at the bottom rung.

Morris - the not-quite central, not-quite wide player who looks like he'd be better paid if we chucked down scraps of food from the stands.

Deegan - the not-quite brawler, not quite winning the ball back even if he does try bloody hard.

It was unfortunate that we were forced into a defensive mindset, turning back the clock to welcome a trusted old friend - yet injuries aside it felt like Boothroyd relished an opportunity to go one-up-fecking-front in the final inane minutes to keep the might of a willing Morecambe at bay. Through the cloned clichés it was hard to pick up anything of substance in his post-match delight, but when he declared us the only team to look like finding the net, one wondered whether he was clinging to the hope that Doumbé would suffer a spectacular loss of directon once again. 

He did not, and at least the foundations of a brick wall are being built once again. The question is, is this the time to be going back to basics yet again? We seem to be slowly rebuilding in a pre-season of our own, as if Aidy spent the whole of his summer on holiday, picking up random tourists instead of keeping the foundations that were growing strongly at home.

Cardoza's programme notes were telling - the trust that is built between the two is genuine - but poor Dave is staring impatiently at another seemingly impossible climb to the summit, with no leaders looking ready to step forward to climb us out of this muddled mess of a season. Boothroyd still looks ready to rally the troops, to tighten the trenches, to scream bloody loudly for the good ol' fashioned spirit of hard work to instill its rugged ways into us, before he relegates himself to the scrapheap.

Once again though, it's a fight. It's a battle. It's the threat of a trapdoor returned below. The only progress that's been made is yet another bloody chance for us to wipe the slate clean and start again. Right at the bottom.

He built himself time, but is there time for another rebuild or will yet another knight come tumbling down from his castle at Oxford?

New season. Old stylings.

Football is back - the summer signings, the ridiculous rumours, the overly optimistic overtures, the sun bathing every single perfect blade in lush Technicolor. Expectation is everywhere.

This is our year.

Football is back - the nagging negativity gnawing at your ears, the disappearing debutants, glorious rays lost to aimless hoofs, not so much blood and thunder - more thud and blunder. Last-minute letdown.

Oh, I remember why it isn't now.

On the first day of pre-season, Boothroyd built a bonfire, put Wembley on the top and burnt the f**king lot. Trouble is, on the first day of the real thing it was evident that we'd only gone and forgotten the damn extinguisher. Sure, you can try and try to set fire to the past as much as you like but memories never turn to ash. And we all remember that day of non-days.

Boothroyd promised to re-ignite our dwindling flame with a different kind of style, only no-one quite seemed to realise he meant retreating another sodding 20-yards until we may as well be waving our white flags upon kick-off.

Still, let's not be pessimistic. Let's be pragmatic. It was the first day. And the first day at school is sometimes a bit sh*tty. Our midfield, on paper, on a flat surface (hint hint!) looks promising despite a powder puff start. Our defence generally were watchful and resilient - if Heath plays that solidly with the mere offer of a free lunch on the table - imagine if we actually start to pay him!

Then there's the strikers. No wait, the striker. Well O'Donovan may as well have been on strike, because for most of the game he suffered the same kind of anonymity as the ball did from the pitch. That is not his fault and a nice bit of hard graft left crossbar shaking in agony. It was almost a shot on target within the previous 180 minutes. Almost.

Most of all though there was a tired predictability about nearly scrapping for a point. One willing runner  might salvage a few pieces of luck, but it was never likely to influence our away day blues for the better. What we need is some presence, or adventure. The only presents we gave York were our timid selves of last year, ready and willing to be sacrificed, even if we held out somewhat valiantly 'til the last.

York looked ordinary, much improved on last year and they will surely be fine under Worthington, but it's too lovely a place to strike fear into better opposition. We were clumsy and clunky, epitomised by Carter's unnecessary bookings and a completely invisible Morris making him seem like the least likely captain of the lot - unless it's of an already sinking ship.

Platt will come back and in-between crankiness, will be okay. Its surprised me that he has caused such a rage of opinion, as he is merely an injury-prone average journey-man, earning one last honest wage through a ridiculous two-year contract. We are better with him and his occasional quality of lay-off, but we could be so much better without him if we showed some hint of forward-thinking.

Surely, surely a hitman will come in soon. Haunting echoes of the big man will still reverberate around the place until another monster is bought and born, or more likely loaned. The only thing to fear at the moment is our tenacity and toughness - and Hackett when he returns. It's simply not enough. It might be very early days, but all the warning signs are there that we will struggle to build on a promising campaign unless we bring a little flair to the party. JJ Hooper looks like potential, unknown quantities can always excite but one thing I do find Boothroyd to be is trustworthy and if he's not jumping through hoops to start him yet then so be it. O'Donovan and Hooper don't fill me with confidence as a prospective partnership, they seem too alike but we will never know until we try. Or try that something different. Any one of those 'supposed' sixteen will do. I suspect the figure is fast running down.

So, finally to the one area we have not discussed, but perhaps the most important of all. Area Tozer. Less bull, more serial dozer, no-one quite knows what he's doing there any more; least of all seemingly himself. I don't mind him - actually he can have his uses as a spare part but when did utility room ever become a place to feast? Somewhere between the lines that nobody sees, he gets out his mop to do some light housework. Area Tozer is clean where it needs to be mean, sloppy where it needs to be decisive and that his most important moments have come from the sidelines says more than I ever could. His one weapon less and less dangerous, his deficiencies more and more pronounced. Please get rid of area Tozer, once and for all. It belongs, if anywhere, at the back. It's called defence.

So to the future, what of it? I am not too down, more fidgety and frustrated. Just three points have left us. The cracks are obvious. They can be smoothed. We will return to home comforts and bully as we do best, but boy can Boothroyd be stubborn when change is afoot. We need small ones, not massive ones but until he does make them I feel as if we are treading water. That one question still remains.

Where art thou striker?