Oh the tension!

This Saturday, it’s the winner-take-all showdown at Middlesbrough.  If we win, we go up into The Premier League.  Anything else and it’s the play-offs.

The game is huge, massive.

Sky would have you believe that the £200million showdown, to enter ‘the greatest league in the World’, is without compare in global football terms.  If you are a bean-counter or someone who has no appreciation of the history of our glorious game (that’s YOU, Sky Sports), then you are probably right. But a sunny day in May 1997 ticks all the boxes for Albion’s biggest ever game.

After two years of relentless struggle against unscrupulous bastard owners, we journeyed to play Hereford United on 3rd May with a simple equation written down.  A draw would keep us in the league by virtue of a better goals-scored tally.  Anything else and The Conference beckoned.  More importantly for Albion, relegation would probably mean the club going out of business.  That might sound dramatic, but that was the stark reality.

There are lots of magnificent football books in circulation but for a ‘from the heart’ account of how fans campaigned, protested and (literally at times) fought for the survival of a Football Club, then you need to track down a copy of ‘Build a Bonfire’.

Compiled by Steve North and Paul Hodson, both big Albion fans, it documents, in the words of those at the heart of the struggle, how the ruthless, greedy, selfish owners attempted to sell and profit personally from the sale of the club.  They tried to do this without a single thought for the 95-year history of the club, or the thousands of fans who had poured through the turnstiles over the years.  This will probably be familiar territory for fans of Blackpool and I truly hope they rid their club of the Oyston parasites.

It’s a tale of a ceaseless fight for justice, of a single-minded determination to rid our club of a toxic regime.

The details of the story have been told many, many times, so I won’t go over it again but really, find that book, it’s brilliant.

In December 1996, Albion were rock-bottom of Division Three (League Two for the youngsters), nine points adrift of Hartlepool United, and ten behind Hereford United.  We had just sacked Manager Jimmy Case, an inevitable decision given the shackles (financial and otherwise) he had to work with.  Steve Gritt came in with the club at it’s lowest ebb.  We were terrible.

That first game for Gritt brought about a 3-0 win, our first for eight games and only our 4th all season.  We had been knocked out of the FA Cup by Sudbury Town and crowds were hovering around the 3,000 point.  A win in a Manager’s first game is usually put down to ‘players impressing the new Gaffer’ syndrome and sure enough, we didn’t win in the league again, until January 25th.  By that time, the deficit was somehow down to 7 points, due to a few scrappy draws.

We took to field against Rochdale with 10 home games to go.  Steve Gritt had identified our home form as crucial to our (miniscule) survival hopes, but that’s without taking into account the toxic atmosphere among the crowd, brought about by messrs Archer and Bellotti.

Then something extraordinary started to happen.  The Rochdale game was won 3-0 and that was followed by two more wins and a draw.  This included an incredible game against Hartlepool United, the ‘Fans United’ game.  This is another chapter in our history that has seen hundreds of thousands of words written so I won’t add to them, but the atmosphere and sense of togetherness shown that day, was another vital cog in our oh-so-complex survival machine.

I wrote earlier that Steve Gritt targetted our home form.  Our last 10 home games were: Rochdale (WIN), Hartlepool United (WIN), Exeter City (WIN), Swansea City (WIN), Northampton Town (WIN), Leyton Orient (DRAW – that doesn’t tell even half the story!), Cardiff City (WIN), Barnet (WIN), Wigan Athletic (WIN), and an unforgettable game against Doncaster Rovers, the last at The Goldstone Ground (WIN).

Extraordinary statistics that took us to Hereford seeking the final piece of the impossible jigsaw.  A draw for survival.

The added tension (not that any extra was really needed), was that our main rivals for the drop were………… yes, you’ve guessed it, Hereford United.

I didn’t/couldn’t go and to this day, it’s one of those games where, with hindsight, I wished I had done more to secure a ticket.  Or even gone without one.

The troubles were reaching a climax off the pitch, with a new consortium, headed by the charismatic Dick Knight, looking like they were going to take over.  Relegation to The Conference, though not a deal-breaker, would have made Dick’s job that much harder, so it was all to do for Steve Gritt’s men.

One-nil down at half time, one-nil down with half an hour to go, and I was by now pacing around my local Marks and Spencer, sick with tension and a transistor radio glued to my ear.  The rest, thanks to Robbie Reinelt, is history, and that day provided a springboard for the gradual re-birth of a club.

The fans weren’t done, as more relentless campaigning, this time for a new stadium, came to bear fruit in August 2011.  Five years into life at our new stadium (when do we stop calling it ‘new’ by the way?) and 19 years nearly to the day, since that game against Hereford United, we stand on the brink of a return to the top flight.

It’s a huge game and I will be paralysed with apprehension, come 12.30pm on Saturday, but the biggest game in our history?

Not even close.