by Mr Optimist »
28 Aug 2006 20:55
More maturity shown by Melksham Royal than the author of the first message on this thread and was not even born until nearly 10 years after the author's first match!!
I have been a supporter since my first game in 1979 and I am just loving the "hard time" we are currently experiencing!!!
My moment of clarity cam after the Boro game when I had to queue up for 10 minutes to get into the megastore to buy a shirt for a fellow exile. I was queueing behind some Spanish exchange students and had to fight my way past a group of young Irish lads in their local club tracksuits who many of which were buying home and away shirts. My memory went back to popping in to the tiny shop under the main stand to buy my first replica Patrick RFC shirt in 1984...the place was like a Russian supermarket in comparison!!
When I was queueing up to pay I bumped in to an old mate that I used to drink with at away games in the mid-late to late 80's when I first started going to away games at Mansfield, Exeter, etc with the persil go anywhere for a fiver train tickets and he turned to me and said "I can't wait to see us on Match of the Day tonight" with the enthusiasm of an 11 year old, but we were talking about Reading, not Arsenal or Man Utd...
So...whilst I can sort of understand where the original poster is coming from I say, chill out, sit back and enjoy the ride and the fact that you have seen lean times, as I have and countless others on here, should just make it all the sweeter.
As for what the crowds would be if we went back down two divisions, isn't that just what happens generally in football? Sad but a fact of life, look at Sunderland's first few crowds of 23k 24k this year. If they were in the top flight playing reasonable football against a top team there would be double that going. With every year of growth our traditional hard core support will grow. It used to be 3k hardcore during the 80s and 8k during the 90s. The Madejski years will see this grow to over 10k.