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’.