Some Comforting Poppies Myths

A recent thread on KTFC Chat about us averaging 2500 gates in the late 1980's set me thinking about this and other Poppies myths that somehow seem to have solidified into Poppies facts over the years.

Yes, towards the end of the 1980's we ended one season with an average home league gate of 2500.  A superb average gate.  No doubt.  But context is everything.  At the start of that season we were averaging about 1100.  It took our best FA Cup run in living memory and getting within a sniff of winning the league to boost the average gate to the fabled 2500.  And we only reached the 2500 average because our last two home game gates swelled up to 4500 when the town woke up to the fact that a promotion-to-the-Football-League party might be in the offing.  I hope I'm not ruining it for anyone when I say that we didn't quite make it....

But, we supporters weren't alone in picking and choosing the facts that made us look good.  I recall hearing Peter Morris on the radio at the time casually talking about our 4000+ gates as if this was entirely usual at Rockingham Road and not some freakish aberration. The implication being that he and his brand of samba-football was bringing out goodly amounts of Kettering folk every week.  Wrong on every count there Pete!

Another cracking Poppies-myth was how many points we were clear at the top of the table back in the day when we won at Boston during another good Morris season.  I've heard otherwise sensible people confidently say we were anywhere between 10 and 20 points clear at the top of the league.  In reality I recall us briefly being 9-points clear of the chasing pack who all had games in hand over us, and that had been clawed back to 6-points before our heads hit the pillow that night, but that doesn't sound as good, does it?

We also liked to believe the squad assembled by Ladak / Cooper to win National North back in 2008/9 was perfectly normal for a club of our stature and fanbase.  We had become so used to being awash in Ladak's (well DRC Locums) cash that it didn't strike us as out of the ordinary that all these League One and League Two standard players were happily setting out their wares at Rockingham Road.  God, we genuinely tried to convince ourselves that our 1200 gates were able to afford the squad we had then.  Even when most of them were back in League One or Two in subsequent seasons we somehow convinced ourselves that they'd wanted to drop to Conference North just to play for us.

We also enjoyed bragging about our away support, which, admittedly, has always been pretty good.  But, how many times have we proudly boasted about taking a 1000 to Boston, or Kidderminster or Barnet?  With no corroboration and no arguments.  Never 900 or 1100.  Always a thousand.  Somehow a couple of supporter coaches and a few dozen cars managed to ferry most of our home attendance to whichever far-flung rival we were playing that week to fill out their stadium with a sea of red.

Another favourite myth I've had to listen to is the one where we won the Conference only to be denied promotion because our ground didn't pass a Football League inspection.  Now, I've heard this from non-Poppies fans who have, forgivably, got us mixed up with Kidderminster (and I seldom put them right...) but have also, amazingly, heard the same tale from a few Poppies fans over the years!

Well, if it makes us feel better....

"It's mine I tell ya!
We won it fair and square!"