The sacking of a Manager is often a good point to take stock. The people who run the club have a chance to perform a reset. The players have slates rubbed clean ahead of the new Manager letting them go in favour of their personal favourites. But what of the rest of us? The unwashed masses who have no choice but to be here because for good or ill, Kettering Town FC is our club.
Waiting to hear about a new appointment is, let's admit it, usually an exciting time. Listening as some outlandish names are bandied about by "people in the know". I think my personal favourites were when Sean Dyche and Peter Beardsley were mentioned as being literally on Kettering railway platform before being snatched away. Or that time Gazza was supposedly drinking the Beeswing dry ahead of becoming our Manager. As if!
Invariably the glamourous names fall away and a jobbing technocrat is unveiled to the unenthusiastic hoards. Some do well, some badly. Some get far more abuse from the supporters than others. Some deservedly, others not. But some of our supporters seem to exist to abuse club officials and even fellow supporters. Not in person. Obviously. Not even always at games,where their attendance can be intermittent at best. No, they start sh*t-storms on social media, no matter who or what it costs the club. Nothing is as important as their right to destructively complain.
The annoying thing is our toxic element is such a small part of our supporter base. When you look at all the incredible work and effort being put in by fellow fans at the club and for our benefit and to help keep the Poppies afloat you could almost weep at the damaging vitriol spewed onto Facebook by some of our number.
But it's worth remembering and repeating that for every "fan" out there who isn't happy until he forces a player, manager, official, chairman to quit the club we have dozens and dozens cleaning the stadium, selling (admittedly bent) klondike tickets, serving food and beer, organising coaches for away games, hosting in the hospitality lounge, putting on events and many, many more activities that keep the club going. We don't always notice and certainly don't always appreciate the enormous amount of effort so many people put in for their love of their Poppies. Sometimes all it seems that we do is complain about shelling out 15 quid to get into Latimer Park.
During this period of reflection that the manager and players have let us down perhaps we supporters should look to ourselves to see if we too can do better. Not attending a game hurts, really hurts us as a club. Missing a game at Latimer Park in favour of attending an away game may make us look good on the road, but does nothing for the club's coffers. I'd love to know how many of the younger guys who loudly proclaimed at Chesterfield that they were "Kettering till they die" regularly rock up at Latimer Park? We'd started the season with a few big gates which, perhaps understandably have tailed off given the fare we've been served, but you have only to look at what is happening at Nuneaton Borough to understand the phrase, "Use it or lose it".
We can't always assume someone else will pick-up the slack. Sometimes it's down to all of us to do our bit. We're all guilty of sometimes falling out of love with the Poppies, but in the final analysis we are so intwined with our club that to hurt it is to hurt ourselves. As we ask our Management and players to do better perhaps we too can improve.
