Highest Mountains, Lowest Valleys

It was another good day at the office for the Darlington Football Club players yesterday.

Does sarcasm come across in written form?

Ok, so we lost again. It was 2-0 at home to Bournemouth. Bummer.

I was quite impressed with the crowd today. Nearly 2,000 people turned out to watch the match (1,999 people to be exact. Shame we couldn’t squeeze that one extra person into the ground!) I wonder how many will be at the next home match which is a week on Tuesday against Rochdale.

Whilst I was watching the match (the play wasn’t exactly captivating) I came up with the reasons why I still go despite the fact that we haven’t won a league game yet this season. In fact we are still languishing at the bottom of the entire league with only one point.

You may ask what the point is. ‘Give it up already,’ I hear you say but it is too difficult. Yes, I could go and support a club doing well or even almost guaranteed to get the right result….. Chelsea, Man Utd, one of the Old Firm, or Bournemouth as it happens. But that, my friends, would be wrong. Not only would it be wrong, it would be boring.

My reasons for still going to every home game that I can despite Darlington not getting any results:

1. This is my 10th season supporting the club. I’m not about to throw all that away for some fickle allegience to another club (e.g. mentioned above!).
2. The Underdog theory. Everybody loves the underdog so why should it be any different with Darlo. It is what the Scottish national team thrives upon. We could really use this to our advantage.
3. My club needs my money (fine, my Dad’s money). It needs all the money that it can get. If I don’t go, then it is unlikely that my Dad will go and therefore the club will lose out on nearly £40 worth of support. Wow! That is a ridiculous amount to be paying to see that kind of football with those results. Maybe I’ll just scrap this list altogether…
4. Maybe we could go for some kind of record. The team to be relegated with the lowest points total, the least goals scored, with the fewest scored against them or, maybe, we could be the first team to be relegated by the end of October. Smashing. But I see that Portsmouth are giving us a run for our money on this record thing. They haven’t even got off the mark yet. I’m beginning to appreciate having even one point! I would be strangely proud to be associated with a record breaking team like that. If you can’t laugh at yourself then what else can you do?

 

Actually this is the main reason why I still attend these matches:

I live in hope. I hope that on any given match day my team will put on the performance of their lives. I hope that I will witness something amazing, spectacular. I hope that just once my team will lead in a match. Most of all I hope that this match will be the one, the one where we finally show everyone what we are made of, why the supporters carry on following the team despite the lows. I hope that this match will be one of the highs, one of the good moments in a football supporters season, the game where we turn things around.

I hope that this game will be the one where we take home all three of those precious points, the game that we win.

That is why the Quakers get my continued support because, no matter how deep the valleys are, I’ll always be waiting, hoping for that mountain top, hoping that this is finally the day that I can stand at the end of a match and applaud my team, knowing that they have done me and the rest of their supporters proud.