FIFTEEN YEARS! Jeez.....

This round of end-of-season games flashed up on social media recently.  I always have a quick look to see in which of a half dozen divisions we might have been playing at the time.  On this occasion I noted that we were spending one of our last (probably ever) seasons suping at the top tier of non-league football.  Then I noted the fixture - the last Saturday of the season and a home win over Southport.  And the year - 2011 and it dawned on me that this was the game after which nothing was ever the same again.

Within a couple of months of this fixture we'd left Rockingham Road forever.  Southport were briefly relegated.  The Direones Mk I had gone bust and we were measuring-up for curtains down at Nonce Park.

We finished the game against Southport with, if memory serves, a couple of late goals to send them down and then probably clapped the players off before retiring to the bar to have a few drinks and reflect on a reasonable season in the top flight of Non-League football.  We probably discussed which players Marcus Law might like to retain for the following season.  It'd be great if we could secure the services of on-loan Danny Mills wouldn't it?  Was Adan Cunnington quite up to this level?  Would Ian Roper be able to shave a pound or two off from his cuddly-frame in the close season?  

We'd have pondered who would be our whipping boys away from home now Southport were heading to the punishment of the cold gulag that was Blue Square North.  And we no doubt pondered what hair-brained schemes our increasingly erratic owner might come up with and gave a little chuckle before heading home to catch up with Dr Who and Strictly (at least some things don't change) and a take away meal from one of the numerous outlets on Rockingham Road.  Not a single one of us had an inkling what was coming next.  Was that better than knowing?  I still can't say for sure.

Time marches on.  15 years have passed since then.  We've been ensconced at Latimer Park for over a dozen years now and for a lot of our fans this is all they've ever known.  Think about it.  Very few of our fans under the age of, say, 25, would have ever even seen a Kettering team run out at a ground in Kettering.  They wouldn't have experienced the sights, the sounds, the smells of Rockingham Road.  Or breathed in the pungent atmosphere made up of equal parts cigarette smoke, embrocation and bovril.  

Recently I found myself sufficiently close to our old ground to summon up the nerve to walk up through the houses that now cover our old patch.  Thankfully nothing remains to pull on the heartstrings.  Just a number of small, very closely built, hideously expensive houses on an unexpectedly steep hill.  And then, just when I thought I'd safely negotiated this minefield, I came out onto Cowper Street and the familiarity of the row of houses there plunged me into a feeling of utter sadness.  

Looking directly at these houses a completely irrational fragment of my lizard-mind absolutely KNEW that if I simply turned 180 degrees that Rockingham Road would somehow still be there.  Would that it was....

To directly quote 80's big-hated Reggae popsters, Aswad -

"Don't Turn Around"