I am not glad that Barnet’s hopes of promotion were scuppered yesterday. I am certainly not happy that it happened in a penalty shoot-out of such simplicity that ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS GO RIGHT LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DID, and you would have scored. At the same time I am not devastated that we will spend another season in the Conference. I have plenty of friends who support Conference teams, no-one I know supports third division no-marks. I can compare our progress with that of Exeter City, or Woking and know whom this effects. Getting back into the third would have been like being given a top flight Action man as a kid, but being told you were not allowed to play with it with your friends.
Also I have not been to Underhill once this season, which should not have an effect but does. I have never been a big watcher of the team but I would always catch a few games a season. This year, which was creepingly successful, I ignored the poor lads. Of course I am glad if they can do it without me (they have to week in week out) but I suppose I like to feel more involved. And frankly our (what seemed to me) half arsed qualification for the play-offs at the expense of Exeter did not seem to deserve promotion. Mind you if you were Hereford, walking into the play-offs with a 19 point lead over Aldershot, you might feel more upset. It would have been nice to go up, and one day we will go back up. But it is not too bad where we are right now.
Like I said to Tim yesterday, the third division is crap and the Welsh can have it.