"P*ssing in the wind"

....is, I believe, the correct fiscal term to describe the Direones fans efforts to raise a quarter of million quid in a fortnight.  Whatever you think of the club - soulless abomination, or Max's folly, it is a little disquieting watching their supporters scurry around like ants who are just about to have boiling water poured over them.  Who knows, this could be us in an all too short period.

As much as one would like to feel for them, at the end of the day this is Rushden & Diamonds we are talking about, and any Poppies fan who can remember their formation and early to middle years have waited long enough to see this pretend football club fall.

Harsh?  Perhaps.  But let's look at the case for the prosecution.

Max Grigg's expensive hobby was never a viable enterprise.  He bent the financial structure of non-league out of shape by throwing stupid amounts of money at his plaything.  Non league football had bumbled happily along for a century or more as a semi-professional entity.  Suddenly big transfer fees, salaries and full time status became the norm, even at the more homely corners of the non league game.  Twenty years down the line we're all paying for this seismic change.

Max's open chequebook may have often featured "Kettering Town FC" in the "Payable to" section, but the effect of this was to greatly diminish our club.  Roger Ashby's scouting network, and after him, Brain Talbot, rarely extended further than NN16, and we were soon shorn of our better players, and Gary Setchell.

And mention of Brain Talbot brings us to another reason to despise the Non Park experiment.  This man had, whether by design or by stupidity, unleashed Mark English upon us.  No sooner had we saved ourselves from his one man mission to destroy us, than his partner in crime Talbot was installed at the super club built next door.  I used to describe the situation to outsiders as being akin to having Manchester United transplanted into your street, and then they use your garden as their car park!  Rarely does fate piss so heavily on one group of people in such a short space of time! 

Talbot was always a confusing mixture of the ignorant and the arrogant - who can forget his boast during the days of the bottomless pit of Doc Marten money when he claimed they had one of the lowest budgets in the league, and that the Poppies were paying out far more?  If memory serves, he then lit a fat Havana cigar with a burning twenty pound note.

Their coaches were mailshotting kids at Kettering schools.  Their club was draining our players, and targetting our supporters.  If they had had their way our club would have ceased to exist, and our grateful fans would have all meekly filed over to Irthlingborough.  You saw people brazenly walking around Kettering in Direones shirts FFS!  Oh, and the fact that they invariably beat us didn't help.  And those first two home meetings still feature heavily in the collective nightmares of Kettering supporters.

And then the worse happened.  Max finally spent so much money that even Talbot's lack of management skills couldn't keep them from winning the league.  It didn't help that we were hitting a low point and were about to disappear out of the other end of the division into the pits of hell.  Or the Ryman League as it's sponsors would prefer us to refer to it.  Whilst we had several years of losing to park sides ahead of us, they were about to take their place amongst the elite.

At this point, the thousands of instant Direones couldn't contain themselves.  Them up and us down.  They couldn't have been happier if incest was decriminalised.  They were off on a great adventure, and they could safely forget all about the little Poppies.  Who knows, we might meet one day in the FA Cup!  Their arrogance has not been forgotten.  They did not believe the axiom, "What goes around..." could possibly apply to them.....



Remember to keep Britain tidy -
plastic rubbish goes in here!



And then, one day it happened - proof that if you wish hard enough for a thing to happen, then, just occasionally you are rewarded.  On a cold February morning Max's head accountant slapped a large open ledger in front of his boss and pointed out that his hobby was just about to bankrupt him.  Even Max didn't fancy a future that includeded him eating baked beans from a tin, whilst sitting in his pants in a council house just to keep Talbot in gainful employment. 



The rest is beautiful history.  The funds were withdrawn and the club went into freefall.  They were no longer held up as an inspirational success story.  They were now seen for what they were.  A money pit built in a f*cking village!  The players, management and supporters disappeared as quickly as the money did. 

And now, just as the Diamonds project is reaching its natural end, their few remaining supporters are looking for help to the wider footballing world in order to prevent the inevitable.  Don't expect much in the way of sympathy from this corner of Northamptonshire.  Do us a favour and shrivel up and die, and kindly do it quietly please.