Return of the Beast from the East?

Back in the day at Rockingham Road, when the Tin Hat filled after the change of ends, usually it would not be long before the set list moved on to this little number:

We hate Worcester City

We hate Yeovil too

And Weymouth*

We hate Nuneaton Borough

But Kettering we love you – etc

(* Or was it Enfield?)

All good old adversaries that we liked to sing bad things about, but only in a sort of jokey way. You couldn’t really hate Worcester City, or even Stafford Rangers.

Things changed though with the arrival of noisy upstarts like Woking and Stevenage, who earned their place in an updated version, and we really, truly despised Rushden & Diamonds. In fact, seeing how things turned out for both of us, we probably let them off too lightly.

It was a dysfunctional kind of rivalry.  We had all the history, they had the money. We saw them as a threat to our being, they saw us as a soft target.  We had a metric number of fingers and toes, they were imperial.

Either way, by the time the dust had cleared we were playing at a strange new level populated with unknown opponents. Even the odd club with a name we knew turned out to be an AFC reboot of some kind, and ‘We hate Beaconsfield SYCOB’ fails on so many levels, not least it doesn’t scan.   

So for the past few seasons we have competed without anyone to define ourselves against. No meaningful local derbies. No back stories to add a little spice and no vocal away fans.  In some respects we are better off for it, and can view the fixture list with a detached maturity.  On the other hand, life’s too short not to bear grudges.  

But come what may, next year things will be different. We will either be mixing it at a higher level with some serious opposition, or will again be in the same division as a club from just down the A6. Is it therefore time to pose the question – how do we feel about AFC R&D? On a scale of 1 to 10, are we still the Diamonds haters?  If your old man said be an AFC Diamonds fan, how exactly would you respond?

V1 epitomised all that was wrong about plastic vanity projects and were rightfully loathed far and wide. AFC, however, have gone about things differently: fan owned, living within their means, working their way up on their own merits. I bet they’re even eco-friendly. How dare they be so inoffensive! 

 

The visceral disgust we felt at the very concept of V1 is something that may never be repeated.  You had to be there at a time when they were picking off our few good players, leeching away floating fans, paying relative mega bucks for big ugly bastards who always scored against us, and fawned over every week in OUR local paper by a cringing journo. 

The modern day Poppy will have to make the best of the situation. Any if anyone is short of inspiration, just remember this. 

 

   

As bad as it gets