'Hope, friendship and strength'

Looking back, I’m not sure if I travelled to the Recreation Ground last Tuesday in a ‘party mood’. Perhaps the thousands of miles travelled this season in support of the Shots had finally taken control of my senses. So many miles. So many late nights. So many wins……

And in a game played out to satisfy the survival needs of Weymouth, my attention was distracted by news from Edgar Street, Hereford.

My phone flashed….Wrexham were one nil down at Hereford….then two nil. Relegation to the Blue Square Premier now secured for a club who entered the Football League in 1921, just five years before Aldershot.

The Shawshank Redemption is one of the most popular movies, probably of all time. Despite failing at the movie theatres, after its release in 1994, it achieved public acclaim by way of video, cable television and DVD.

And quite coincidentally, filming took place at the same time as Aldershot Town played out their first season in Diadora League Division 3 (1992/3).

The original story called Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was written by Stephen King, and appeared in a collection of four stories called Different Seasons.

As the text message confirmed the harsh reality of relegation for Wrexham, my attention drifted from the stalemate being played out of the Rec and returned to the Racecourse Ground, and May 30th 2006.

After months of financial uncertainty, High Court action and Administration, I was required to attend the meeting of creditors to register a vote in favour of the Company Voluntary Arrangement, confident that the difficulties of the past could be swept away. And with new owners waiting to takeover, the club could once again perform in a manner consistent with their history.

But after two seasons of on the field failure Wrexham are in a state of corporate despair, as they search desperately for the locations of Nailsworth and Histon. The Blue Square Premier will certainly be a 'shock to the system'. Aldershot didn't have to visit 'The Dripping Pan - Lewes'. But I have no doubt that it will be small, and probably intense. Despite any concern over the unknown, a warm and friendly welcome will be extended by most clubs. But beware, any hint of 'we are too big for this League' will be harshly treated. My advice to all Wrexham supporters is therefore simple. Hire the Shawshank Redemption DVD and observe the treatment of arrogance throughout the film….

York City dropped out of the League under the headline, ‘we will be the Arsenal of the Conference’, and they certainly are!

Like Arsenal, no trophies again.

The Shawshank Redemption is a powerful story of hope, friendship and strength.

Aldershot Town are Champions.

After the party......

After nearly eight months of planning, effort and achievement the party was, when it arrived at Exeter, one to savour. And how the creators of our ecstasy must have celebrated. Singing, and no doubt dancing, long into the night.

The following day my world seemed just grey and flat. The Champagne laced with adrenalin served only to dull the brain, making any sensible thought a step too far.

‘Did we really play in red shorts?’, I enquired of my brother. The night before no more than a footnote in the Times….’promoted’.

And then on Thursday of last week, I checked my diary and was surprised to read that the season wasn’t over. How could I have forgotten the long standing commitment to go up to Halifax to meet old friends.

Arriving at the Shay was a stark reminder that the last partygoers, probably about ten years ago, stripped the place of all fixtures and fittings. The ground a forlorn and windswept rusting hulk.

Gosh, how we all tried to be cheerful. Even the players attempted to raise our spirits. A brief injection of pace and purpose by Kirk Hudson and a few ‘step-overs’ by Joel Grant added a bit of zest to ameliorate our combined hangovers.

0v0.……….and thoughts turned to Tuesday evening.

The final home game. A full house. The presentation of the Blue Square Premier Trophy…….who would have predicted that, as we kicked off the season at Kidderminster, way back in August of last year?

The risen Phoenix....

The barren urban form of Northfleet was never going to be a fitting venue for a performance that would determine the return of Aldershot to the Football League.

To have witnessed promotion at Stonebridge Road would have been like experiencing the return of Nigel Kennedy to public acclaim, after a self-imposed exile, in the South Bank underpass and not within the restored splendour of the Royal Festival Hall.

But it was not simply the surroundings that made Ebbsfleet inappropriate. Had Aldershot Town secured promotion on April 8th 2008 it would have been as a result of Torquay’s failings.

Aldershot Town reached the top of the Blue Square Premier in October 2007.…they have been top ever since….by winning games.

So as the players travelled back to Aldershot, after a hard fought draw, the points needed for promotion were down from 5 to 4.

And then Burton Albion, last Saturday. Another chance for Torquay to fail in their quest to reduce the massive points gap. An expectant but nervous crowd of nearly 6000 all praying for a Torquay slip up. Another Shots win left the revised promotion points target….one point from the four remaining games.

Around 900 Shots fans made the trip to St James’ Park on Tuesday evening……it would prove to be just another game….one point…..ignore the rest.

Looking back I guess the terminal illness that struck Aldershot FC could have been diagnosed long before December 28th 1991, when the Shots recorded their last League win; 2v1 v Maidstone Utd. What followed was an experience that no football supporter should ever be subjected to.

The death of our once proud Club was painful. From January to March 1992, Aldershot played 16 games, lost 14, drew 2 and scored just 2 goals.

1374 fans saw the ‘last game’ at home to Northampton Town on March 7th 1992. Then death was held off….the heart flickered and Lincoln City attracted a crowd of 1473 programme collectors to the Recreation Ground, for what had to be the last game.

But the ‘big needle’ was nowhere to be found, and it was Ninian Park, Cardiff on March 20th 1992, that saw Aldershot pass away.

The Football League statement that followed the High Court decision was short and to the point….’The liquidator called in to supervise the winding-up order of Aldershot confirmed to the League that no offers had been received for the club. It is with deep regret that the League is left with little alternative but to announce that Aldershot’s membership is terminated with immediate effect’.

It was so hard to watch Aldershot gasping for breath over the final weeks of life. Each visit to the Recreation Ground undertaken with a dutiful resilience. A responsibility normally reserved for the few to attend at the bedside of an aged relative…….and when death finally came we were released to get on with our lives.

The rebirth of senior football in Aldershot, created from the ashes of the old club, was for me, no more than a distant ‘play thing‘. The start of the 1992/3 season coincided with a move away from London and the south east. Aldershot Town was still an ‘obsession under construction‘.

My ‘big’ brother constantly pulls my leg about the lame excuse, ‘but I live in Wales’, offered when I couldn’t get to Collier Row for a Tuesday night fixture. Yes, ‘where were you at Royston Town?’….he chides, forgetting his absence at Carlisle on Tuesday 28th December 2004.

But in those ‘early years’ my infrequent trips back to the Rec always left me with the feeling of ‘ghosts from Christmas past’.

After parking close to Redan Hill, the walk down to the ground exposed deep seated emotions. The floodlights coming into view first, then the East Bank, the North Stand followed by a glimpse of the ageing but classic form of the South Stand. Everything was in place…..

And looking around in the North Stand the faces were the same. Perhaps all showing signs of age but still no wiser.

Promotion to the Conference at the end of the 2002/03 season coincided with my own ‘life changing’ moment.

The season started in hospital and ended up at Stoke. A season that exposed the senses to the beauty of power and pace. A confidence developed in innocence. And the play-off final. Simply an explosion of excitement dressed only in a feeling of community pride.

A memorable day to store alongside my first game at the Rec in 1960, and Aston Villa (’64), and Manchester Utd (‘70), and Liverpool (‘71), and Stockport (72/3), and Shrewsbury (’79), and Wolves (86/7), and Jack Howarth……

So as I reflect on the 1v1 draw at Exeter on Tuesday evening, it wasn’t just another game…one point….ignore the rest.

No, this result returned to Aldershot a status that was so painfully taken away in 1992.

No Club has a ‘right’ to membership of the Football League. And our place, somewhere closer to the ‘top table’ has been achieved not by the outstanding goalkeeping of Nikki Bull or indeed the youthful exuberance of our young squad, but it has been achieved through the combined emotional power of so many people over the period 1992-2008.

And as the realisation of, ‘we’re going up as Champions’, begins to sink in, I am concerned that with the obsession of League football realised, I simply don’t know how I’m going to feel as the new season kicks off in August.

But then as Roald Amundsen once said, ‘I’ve done the South Pole….I may just have a go at the North’.

Time to focus.....

It’s going to be a long day and I have to admit to a degree of nervous tension. So it is at times like this that a 0630hrs walk with Wini, our Welsh Sheepdog, is more effective than a prescribed beta blocker.

The air was crisp and clear as the thin early morning sun removed the lingering and gently frozen sign of winter from the fields high above our house.

In the distance the north Devon coast, an image just waiting to be hung in Tate Britain. And beyond Exeter. Perhaps a bit of work this morning and then…….

The people of Tibet are oppressed and the Chinese Government seem to struggle with the concept of human rights.

And?

Well, I suppose with it nearly being time for another ‘carnival’ dressed up as the Summer Olympic Games, it is hardly surprising that athletes from across the world have come forward to take part in the ancient sport of ‘torch stealing‘.

Despite Pierre de Coubertin founding the International Olympic Committee in 1894, which led to the first Summer Olympics in 1896, it was not until the Amsterdam Games in 1928, that the commemoration of the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus was reintroduced.

The modern convention of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay from Olympia to the Olympic venue began with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

And Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia released in 1938 was not only the first documentary film on the Olympic Games, but without doubt the finest.

So as Adolf Hitler prepared to lay his beach towels down over most of Europe the idea to add myth and mystique to the modern German Reich became an opportunity just too good to miss.

‘The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn’t separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That’s why the Olympic Flame should never die.’ - Adolf Hitler 1936.

Now those are the emotions we would all subscribe to…..but given the horrors soon to engulf Europe and the Far East, perhaps Berlin was truly the end of the Olympic dream.

So the recent attempts to extinguish the Flame as it travels an incredible 137,000km to Beijing only adds a footnote to the history of the ‘Political Olympics’. A history that spans the Soviet Union’s cold shoulder of the Games until 1952, the tragic deaths of 9 Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, the boycott by 65 nations of the Games in Moscow in 1980 because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan….now where have I heard that name before?

Perhaps it is time to return the Games to Olympia. An opportune moment to call time on this archaic sporting event. Time to question the relevance of the Olympics in a media driven ‘consumer world’.

And just how much is a gold medal in a rowing event really worth?

Well on ‘Redgrave day’ most of the nation sat expectantly on the edge of their seats. And with another gold medal performance didn’t we all sing and dance. A nation all waving the flag in a manner reminiscent of the outpouring of joy that surrounded the marriage of Charles and Di.

Well perhaps the flag-waving was not so obvious in Kirkcaldy, and the emotion was a I’m sure somewhat muted west of the Second Severn Crossing.

But I have no doubt, the 5800 spectators who crammed into the Recreation Ground, Aldershot, on Saturday are only concerned about the fitness of John Grant and our chances of securing the point needed to ‘go up as Champions’, at Exeter this evening. The prospects of the Quadruple Four can wait for another day.

Time, I think, to replace the vanity of government with a genuine value for money review of the benefits of the Olympics.

Jacques Rogge made the dramatic announcement at 1249BST on July 6th 2005, that London would host the 2012 Games. (Prime Minister) Tony Blair called the win ‘a momentous day’ for Britain.

Well for once he got it right!

It was time to join in with the flag-waving supporters who had gathered in Trafalgar Square to hear the news. And a hand of sympathy should have been extended by us all to our ‘friends’ across the Channel, who simultaneously received the result underneath a dismal blanket of cloud……then raindrops began falling on the disappointed crowd of Parisians outside the Hotel de Ville.

But hang on a minute Tony. Who was it that gave you the £2.4bn estimate of costs? Now at the time I was somewhat surprised, as the cost of the 2004 Athens Games was declared, in November 2004, to be no less than £6bn (not including the cost of transport projects)

In fact the Athens Games were five times over budget.

Not to worry though, because as Spyros Capralos, Technical Director of the Athens Olympic Organising Committee, admitted, ‘when it’s the Olympics, you worry about paying for it later’.

Well that time is approaching very fast. And is Tony still around to defend the commitment? Of course not, he is long gone and poor Tessa Jowell, Minister for the Games, reassures that the cost will be no more than £9.325bn. Most observers report that the budget is already £12bn and a figure of £20bn is more likely. That is unless Robert Mugabe is asked to prepare the final account.

In 1948 the Summer Olympics were held in London. After a break of 12 years caused by World War Two these were the first Summer Olympics since the 1936 Berlin Games.

The 1940 Games had been scheduled for Tokyo and the 1944 Games provisionally planned for London.

The ‘austerity Games’ cost only £600,000 to stage and remarkably made a £10,000 profit.

The equestrian events were held at Tweseldown Racecourse and at the Military Stadium, Aldershot…….


And after a nervous 90 minutes, last Saturday, Aldershot Town overcame a Burton Albion side devoid of anyone with the ability to put the ball beyond Nikki Bull in the Shots goal.

With most of the 5800 crowd hoping for a Stevenage victory over Torquay, the tension could be felt all around the ground, and by the end we were all relieved to record…..

90 minutes….3 points….one less game to play.

If only we could ignore the rest.


Exeter City will have to block out the fear of failure tonight. Another season of getting so close but falling at the last. Perhaps a season that will see the immediate return to the Football League of their south coast rivals, Torquay.

Yes, if we play with the confidence, pace and power that has been the hallmark of this season the one point needed for our own return to the League will be secured.

High expectation.....

So many games and so little time……

The expectations were certainly running high as around 900 Shots fans made the tiresome trip, around the M25, to Northfleet last Tuesday evening.

And having to travel from Wales, I would easily place Ebbsfleet in my top five, ‘I don’t want to go there’ trips. It is a long way….the traffic is always bad and it is not pretty.

But on Tuesday evening the sun shone….our spirits were high and the National Grid crossed my view from the broken down terrace with a majesty…..

No it looked just like it always does. And not even the stunning azure above could convince me otherwise.

Ebbsfleet threatened. Aldershot were pretty comfortable. Ebbsfleet scored and we drew level. Then John Grant scored a second.

And then news from Plainmoor flowed around the ground. A trickle of knowledge overtaken by a torrent of excitement; the news of Oxford drawing at Torquay swallowed up all in its path like the annual birth of a river in the plains of Africa.

"We were going up as Champions….".

Torquay scored a second after 78 mins….Ebbsfleet equalised in the 88th.

If only we could all remember that promotion will be achieved through the winning effort of our team and not by the failings of others.

Burton Albion today….90 mins…three points….one less game to play.

If only we could ignore the rest.

So near......

The Canal Age in Britain lasted, pretty roughly, from 1760 to 1850, taken over at the end by the advance of railways.

The impact of the waterways extended way beyond the base of the industrial revolution. Yes, they were more than simply a means of transport; they influenced business organisation, revolutionised the engineering profession, employed large gangs of men - the navigators or navvies - on their construction. And above all they led to the development of Towns and the urban pattern that we know so well today.

In a list of all time canal engineer greats, James Brindley would probably appear at number one. Born near Buxton in 1716 his work lives on to this day, in a British Waterways network that gives pleasure to tens of thousands of narrowboat enthusiasts.

So it was with thoughts turning to the industrial revolution that we set out from Great Haywood, last Saturday (29/03), for a stress releasing week completing the Black Country Ring.

A week when it is so easy to contemplate Man’s contribution to the landscape. A week designed to secure sufficient ‘credits’ from my wife for the next fifty Aldershot Town games. A week to set to one side the pressures of work and the endless search for clients with the ability to pay…..

I guess few if any of the Shots fans travelling to Stafford on March 29th would have registered that the Gravelley Hill Interchange sits above Salford Junction. Yes, underneath the confusion of ’Spaghetti Junction’ the Grand Union Canal’s ‘Saltley Cut’ and Tame Valley Canal form a ‘crossroads’ with the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal.

Engulfed in the concrete gloom, with tier upon tier of roadway spiralling above, time for just a moment to consider whether the M6 will survive another 100 years. Sufficient time, perhaps, for heritage to overtake engineering.

A week on the motorways….yes, that should gain sufficient credits for watching the Shots home and away during the 2107/08 season.

And so in the week that I have been ‘absent’, Aldershot Town beat Stafford Rangers 2v1.…overcame a spirited Rushden and Diamonds to win the Setanta Shield, then the Shots secured a vital 2v1 victory over Salisbury to go 17 points clear at the top of the Blue Square Premier.

With results going in our favour the message board has been full of talk about beating Ebbsfleet on Tuesday and perhaps Torquay losing at home to Oxford….making the Shots Champions, with five games still left to play.

But for me….and I’m sure Gary and Martin…it is 90mins…three points…one less game to play….ignore the rest.