Gary Andrews

Certain news really puts football in perspective. Fans are fond of quoting Bill Shankly’s famous phrase about the sport being more important than life and death, but that gets put to one side when you hear some genuinely upsetting news that actually does deal with life and death situations.

This news concerns Torquay United defender and former Exeter City club captain Chris Todd who has just been diagnosed with Leukaemia.

Chris arrived at Exeter City after being released in Swansea City, via a brief spell in Ireland. He was brought to the club by Neil McNab in 2003, one of the few decent things to come out of the much-maligned coach’s short-lived reign at St. James’ Park.

Although he couldn’t stop the Grecians’ relegation from the league, the happy-go-lucky Welshman became a mainstay of Exeter’s defence during their time in the Conference. First he formed an impressive partnership with Santos Gaia, then Gary Sawyer. Other defenders came and went but Toddy remained at the heart of the back four.

When Paul Tisdale took over as manager of the club in 2006, there was always very little doubt who he’d pick as captain. Chris was a popular player in the dressing room and a strong leader on the pitch and as one of the few players who’d stuck with City through the lean times, his appointment was appreciated by the fans.

As captain, Chris helped lead the Grecians to their first trip to Wembley at the end of the season, although the side lost to Morecambe.

At the end of that season, Chris followed Exeter’s former assistant manager Paul Buckle down the A380 to Torquay United, where he again became a mainstay of their defence as they mounted a challenge to bounce straight back into the league following their relegation.

The disease was only picked when when a nurse recommended he have a blood test after he struggled to recover from an operation. He was told the news on Monday. Part of the complications of the disease includes an enlarged spleen, which could easily rupture on contact and Chris was lucky to get through a 5-a-side game unscathed on the morning he found out about his disease.

I’ve met and interviewed Chris on many an occasion and he’s genuinely one of the nicest guys you could wish to meet in football. He’s always cheerful and, unlike many modern footballers, is happy to chat to anybody – fans or journalists. Many an interview would finish with both of us in fits of laughter.

Typically, the defender is taking the news in his usual good-humoured manner:

“Obviously it’s a bit of bad news for me.

“I’m very pleased to be at a club where they are giving me 100% support and I’ve got my family behind me, who are amazing. It’s hard to accept but I’m a fighter, as anybody who knows me will tell you. I have had upsets in my career and this is just another step. I will deal with it and I will be back.”

You can hear further reaction on Gemini FM’s page here.

Chris will learn on Monday at what stage the disease is at – at best, it could still be in its early stages and he could be back on the pitch within a few months.

What makes it, to me, even more shocking is Chris is, at 27, still a young man. He’s only a month older than me, but also has a fiancee and a young daughter to care for.

Chris Todd is one of football’s good guys. He’s also a fighter, and I hope that the fighting spirit that you always see from him on the pitch will see him through this dreadful time.

Get well soon Chris.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Chris Todd, Exeter City, Leukaemia, Torquay United

Tomorrow night will be the third football match I’ll have attended in four days, and a third completely different type of football in the process.

On Saturday there was a trip up the Northern Line to watch Exeter beat Barnet 1-0 and go third in League 2 in the process.

Yesterday was a visit to White Hart Lane to watch ‘Arry Redknapp’s new charges take on a woeful Bolton team that could have been defeated by either of the two sides I saw the day before.

Tomorrow, Two Footed Tackle’s Chris and I will be heading south of the river to watch Tooting and Mitcham United take on Harrow Borough. For some reason, I can’t type the word Harrow without thinking of Kim Il-Jong from Team America: World Police.

I’d imagine tomorrow’s trip will be a complete contrast to both the lower reaches of the football league and the Premier League. From the thousands, to the few thousands to the just-over-a-hundreds, there’s always something heartening to see so many people turning out to watch any level of football, all with their own stories and history of the club. it’s kind of why I keep watching all levels of the game week in, week out.

As you can guess, the excessive football watching is part of the reason it’s a bit quiet on here. That, and other stuff. The upshot of it all is I’ve been so knackered that I fell asleep in front of my computer last night whilst in the middle of writing my Soccerlens piece. That one, I suspect, will need some serious subbing and alterations when I go back to it tonight.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Barnet, Bolton, Exeter City, Harrow Borough, Harry Redknapp, sleep, Tooting and Mitcham United, Tottenham Hotspur

At Soccerlens: Why Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur could take lessons from Exeter City and Steve Perryman in how to get the director of football position right.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Damian Comoli, Dennis Wise, Director of Football, Exeter City, Newcastle United, Soccerlens, Steve Perryman, Tottenham Hotspur

My friend Steve deserves many hearty slaps on the back and no small amount of congratulations. Exeweb, the forum he created for Exeter City fans, recently celebrated its tenth birthday.

But this isn’t another Exeter City football post from me – Steve’s site is a perfect example of social media in action, and has been such years before the term social media was ever invented.

Going further, you could put forward a significant argument that Exeter City FC would not exist were it not for Exeweb. More of that in a minute.

One thing that is immediately striking about Exeweb is the sense of community on the message boards. There’s a familiarity between posters you don’t often find on forums. Indeed, many of Exeweb’s users know each other offline but got to know each other through Exeweb.

The site has enhanced the activity that brought them together in the first place – supporting Exeter City. Strangers have met up for drinks, shared lifts to away games and even formed their own football team out of it.

Ideas are exchanged and friendships are made, and for exiled fans, the forum is an invaluable resource. These are not geeks or early adopters – they’re just football fans coming together online to share their passion.

Last May, when Exeter made it to Wembley for the Blue Square Premier play-off final, a London-based Exeter fan, Alan Crockford, hired out a nearby pub specifically for Exeweb users and their families to meet and drink before the game. Many new friendships were formed on that day and created a sense of togetherness that wouldn’t have been present if the fans had scattered around assorted pubs.

But Exeweb has gone beyond adding to fans support of the club. It has, quite literally, helped save the club from ruin.

Five and a half years ago, the club was taken over by businessmen John Russell and Mike Lewis. The previous chairman, Ivor Doble, was in his 70s and looking to sell. Russell and Lewis came into town as the proverbial white knights.

Lewis had been involved at Swansea City, where he’d controversially sold the club to £1 to revilled owner Tony Petty. Such was the force of hatred towards Lewis in Swansea at the time that he couldn’t travel to away games at the Vetch without police protection.

Russell, meanwhile, had been chairman of Scarborough when they were relegated from the League. He also had a conviction for obtaining property by deception. Had the fit and proper owner test been in place at the time, it is unlikely he could have taken over the club.

But at the time the pair talked the talk and promised to take the club to new heights, as all owners do. Were it not for Exeweb, they would have taken the club to new lows.

A few months into their reign, certain Exeweb users – a couple of them local journalists – started noticing a few promises and claims from the pair didn’t add up.

Money promised from a chairty event that, bizarrely, saw Michael Jackson speak at the park hadn’t materialised, and a promotional shot that featured new manager Neil McNab had been taken BEFORE the previous manager, John Cornforth, had been sacked. These were just a small number of the strange stories coming out of St. James Park.

Slowly, but surely, more and more members of Exeweb came to realise Russell and Lewis weren’t exactly the saviours of the club and the site’s message boards started to contain closer scrutiny of the pair’s dealings – scrutiny that suggested the club was in serious financial problems.

At the same time, the club’s Supporters’ Trust had been slowly gaining momentum, again thanks to Exeweb. Originally set up to help the club find funds to purchase striker Gary Alexander, the Trust’s aims had changed to getting fan represntation on the board and ensuring the club survived the financial crisis.

Exeweb gave the Trust a much wider audience thanthe offline world could provide it. Some of the key players in the Trust had their passion for Exeter reawakened through Exeweb, or got to know each other through the site.

At the end of the season, Exeter were relegated from the League and the nowRussell and Lewis were arrested (and subsequently convicted a few years later) for fruad. Exeter City FC was in massive debts and Ivor Doble had neither the money nor the energy to help the club.

In stepped the Supporters’ Trust, with volunteers – many of them brought together through Exeweb – giving up their time to do everything possible to save the club. And they succeeded by the skin of their teeth.

The club was hours away from going into liquidation when the Trust managed to get together a deal for the creditors and ensure Exeter still had a professional football club.

Granted, Exeweb couldn’t take the credit for this. But many of the individuals who helped save the club in the weeks after Russell and Lewis’ arrest wouldn’t have got involved had it not been for Exeweb.

As Damien Mills aka Egg, Trust member and one of the earliest critics of Russell and Lewis said in a recent discussion about Exeweb:

“In the summer of 2003, a series of meetings took place at the Exeter Airport Business Park premises of Ian Huxham’s Potbury Signs. Those meetings were, IMHO, absolutely critical in securing Trust control of the club and, in turn, its very future.

I can’t pretend to speak for all those present, and readily admit my memory isn’t what it might be, but I’m fairly sure that some of the key players within that disparate group of people – think former directors Barry Sansom and Geoffrey Styles to name but two – were brought together by ExeWeb.

Certainly, Terry Pavey, who played a very significant role back then, would tell you his passion for the football club was reawakened by stumbling across ExeWeb while exiled in Kent. Moreover, I’m firmly of the opinion that Russell and Lewis might just have ‘got away with it’ were it not for the opposition to them which, to a large extent, grew out of the site.

In short, I think anyone with ‘a bit of Exeter City in their heart’ owes Steve a debt of gratitude – all the more so when you consider ExeWeb is a labour of love for which, it seems to me, he receives plenty of brickbats and nowhere near enough plaudits.”

The Trust is now the majority shareholder in Exeter City. The fans, in this case, really do own the club. I consider myself proud that I’m a shareholder in the club I love.

For all the talk surrounding internet football venture MyFootballClub.co.uk, it’s got nothing on Exeweb. Steve’s site may not own the club, but many members of Exeweb are shareholders. Moreover, it brought together the fans at the club’s darkest hour, and was able to quickly galvinise them into saving Exeter City FC.

Steve has maintained Exeweb largely with his own time and money, and the help of volunteer moderators. Over the years, he’s had a fair few angry calls from people at the club, annoyed at things that have been posted on the forums – although many at the club know how important the site is.

He’s even had offers to sell up. He refused, to ensure Exeter CIty fans could continue to have an independent voice.

Exeweb’s popularity has spread. It has its own fan page on Facebook and there’s plenty of Exeter City supporters who use Facebook as a supplement to Exeweb. As social media tools expand into the mainstream, expect Exewebbers to filter into them.

Steve probably never set out to create a perfect example of a powerful social media tool. He probably never even envisioned the role it would play in the club’s future when he first set it up. But achieved his aim to provide a place online for fans of the club to chat. And that’s expanded beyond his wildest explanations.

I’ll leave it to the man himself to sum things up:

“As it’s evolved over the years, news sterted to pop up on the forum before I could type it up and if there anything people don’t know, they ask and get answers and opinion. As a model of web usability, that is as damned near to perfect as you can get!

What I’m trying to say is that I think this site is unique. The fact it’s survived ten years is testament to all of you as much as it is me.”

Steve, the web and all Exeter City fans salute you.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Exeter City, Exeweb, footbal fans forums, social media

The Emirates has long been on my list of stadiums to visit. There’s somebody about it that just looks like plenty of thought and grace has gone into the design. And, you know me, if there’s any sort of football being kicked about, chances are I’ll watch it. Hence, my attendance at Arsenal Youth Team v Sheffield United in The Competition Formerly Known As The Milk Cup tonight.

There was no time to admire the architecture at Ashburton Grove – a mix up with food in the pub beforehand and a painfully slow Piccadilly Line meant we were running late for kick-off, and with our seats on the top tier, about twelve minutes had already elapsed by the time we parked our backsides on the padded seats.

Yes, a football stadium with padded seats for the proles. You can tell they meant business. Not mean business, but more like business class airline business.

There was still plenty of time to admire the surroundings, however, as it transpired we’d missed absolutely bugger all, and for the next 15 minutes we proceeded to watch bugger all. Arsenal’s youngsters (average age 10. Probably. A least a handful were born after Italia ’90, which is just wrong by my book) stroked the ball around nicely but failed to walk the ball into the net, while Sheffield United looked to break on the counter but, despite (or because of) the presence of James Beattie up front, had no cutting edge.

So, while both teams engaged in a cagey opening, I took time to survey the stadium and was suitably impressed. Despite being back near the top, the view was still perfect, and there was plenty of space for legs, while still maintaining an intimate feel.

The whole place positively glimmers, with a sleek cleanliness that is a perfect design complement to Arsene Wenger’s style of football. You can only really take in the surroundings with a sense of awed hush, which probably explains why the place is so bloody quiet.

Going as a neutral to football matches is always a weird experience, but the atmosphere and noise generated by the fans usually drags me into caring about the game. Not so at Arsenal. Occasional pockets of noise sprung up and once or twice a few people stood up and tried to get a chant going, before being told to sit down. And for the rest of the time, I may as well have been watching a game of tennis or a mildly exciting game of chess.

Actually, make that a game of chess where every slightly iffy move is greeted with groans or, worse still, boos or profanity. Every time Arsenal made a mistake, which wasn’t a great deal, a mixture of all three rang out from around me. I’ve been to plenty of football games, and this was a first. The singing had been dispensed with all together and the crowd had moved straight into frustration.

On the half-hour mark there was finally something to lift the crowd, when Nicklas Bendtner, who had been the Gunners best player up to that point, fired a low shot from the edge of the area that squeezed past Paddy Kenny and put Arsenal one up.

It also stirred Sheffield United a little bit and they looked to respond immediately, but Wenger is no mug. He may have picked a side mostly consisting of teenagers, but in the centre of defence were Johann Djourou and Alex Song, who’ve a good deal of senior experience under their belts, and they succeeded in comfortably repelling any attacks from the Blades.

Ten minutes later Bendtner struck again following a lovely passing move across the pitch before (I think) Ramsey backheeled the back to the Danish striker, who looked suspiciously offside but tucked the ball away nonetheless.

That finally got the crowd going and we got the first and only proper mass chant of the night – Stand Up If You Hate Tottenham – and it was midway through this that Bendtner’s strike partner, Mexican teenager Carlos Vela, slipped through for a neat third goal to put the Gunners three up ten minutes before half time.

The interval was a slightly strange and very dull affair. Adverts beamed down from the screen, interspersed with the Arsenal equivalent of the National Lottery, as if I’d stumbled onto the set of a quaint daytime gameshow. With my companions off getting programmes, I checked on the Exeter Reserves score (2-0 up against Swindon’s second string) and waited quietly in my seat for the second half, as did the rest of the crowd. Had somebody started handing out tea in bone china, it would have felt quite natural.

The second half started in much the same fashion as the first left off. Arsenal’s youngsters, knowing they had a three goal cushion, relaxed and started playing some gloriously flowing football and soon enough the crowd were treated to a spectacular fourth when Vela flicked the ball passed two defenders before excuting a perfect lob over the advancing Paddy Kenny.

Soon after 16-year-old Jack Wilshere, who probably should have been getting ready for bed on a school night, made it five with a low drive from a corner and it really was game over.

The rest of the match played somewhat like a training ground exercise, with neat passing movements between the Arsenal players, while the Blades didn’t look overly inclined to both trying to salvage anything. Soon after the fifth goal, the Sheffield United supporters started a lengthy singsong and made more noise in the stadium than the home fans did all match.

There was time for Vela to complete a well-deserved and sublime hat-trick three minutes from time when he was put through by Aaron Ramsey and slid the ball past Kenny. It was no less than he, and Arsenal, deserved.

By this stage, though, a good 50% of the fans weren’t around to see the icing on the cake. With fifteen minutes to go, people started edging towards the exit and with about 8 minutes left on the clock, about half the seats around me were empty.

Coming away from the Emirates, my thoughts were firmly divided into two categories: the football and the rest of it.

On the pitch, Arsenal were simply breathtaking, despite many of the players having little or no first team experience and not being old enough to drink. Wenger has long specialised in being able to unearth young gems and he looks as if he’s got another team of potential stars.

Vela will get the headlines, and the player has plenty of natural talent, although still lacks an awareness of his team-mates around him on occasions. That will come with time. Bendtner, on the other hand, already had that intelligence after plenty of first team games and his reading of the game was a cut above his team-mates.

In midfield, Ramsey and Wilshere – with a combined age that’s only just over 30 – looked as if they’d been playing together for ten years, so assured were their performances. There was a real understanding between them, and a calmness and maturity to their play, offset by the fearlessness of youth. They were a joy to watch.

But… but… but… regular readers know my love for non-league football – the banter on the terraces, the joys of standing up close to the pitch and singing rude little ditties to the opposition goalkeeper, the atmosphere that comes from a hardy bunch banding together to watch their little team. The exact opposite of the Emirates.

And yet on my visit to White Hart Lane about six months ago, the atmosphere was electric from start to finish. Nobody sat down (sitting is an alien concept to me at football) and everybody sang for 90 minutes. Granted, that game was against Chelsea, while this was a League Cup game against lower opposition. But my Arsenal supporting housemate later told me that tonight’s atmosphere was louder than usual.

And its easy to see why. A plush, comfy new stadium combined with aesethically pleasing football and no real sense of sound, plus branded Arsenal goods at every glance and a slightly weird screaming at weird moments made the Emirates feel more like an American sporting event rather than a blood and thunder cup game between top dogs and plucky scrappers.

I have a lot of time for Arsene Wenger. Often he seems to be a lone voice of sense in the Premiership and I admire his steadfast commitment to building the club on strong, youthful foundations. In a lot of respects Arsenal are a model for any club.

But at the same time, the non-footballing side feels like everything I don’t want a club to turn into. Logo-centric, clean, sanitised sport served with a relaxed, smiling face. Had I ventured into the toilets, Arsenal-branded loo-roll holders and a bathroom attendant would have seemed normal.

Arsenal are a great club to watch. I could happily watch Wenger’s brand of football every week, but I couldn’t watch it there. It would drive me nuts. No jumping up and screaming, no non-stop singing, no banter, no witty spur-of-the-moment chants or comments. Just overly-expectant fans and polite applause. I can understand why Mike Ashley downed his pint now – sitting in such a sanitised environment would drive me to drink (more than I currently do).

At the risk of getting lynched by every part of North London, if you could combine the electric atmosphere at White Hart Lane with the football on offer across the way, you’d have a winner. But somehow Spurs’ feverent passion would, I suspect, feel out of place with the more cerebral style of play on offer at Ashburton Grove and more fitted to the erratic, yet occasionally sublime, nature of Spurs.

But most of all, it served to remind me how much I miss Exeter City. Due to family commitments, birthdays, work, holiday and a few other bits and pieces I’ve not been able to make a single Exeter game this season, and probably won’t be able to until Barnet away at the end of October. And, God, I’ll be ready for it.

I’ve missed the ‘takeover’ of pubs on away days. I’ve missed the array of chants that I still sing at weekend mornings. Quietly. To myself. When I think nobody’s in earshot.

I miss the City club bar – the Centre Spot – which is always rammed and sweaty, but where you can’t take two steps without bumping into an old face. I miss the slightly warm Tribute served there, and the array of ciders and beers from the club’s bottle bar. I miss standing midway down the Big Bank, just to left of the goal, with the same set of people, and Scotty’s mum handing out a bag of sweets. I miss watching our centre-backs hoof the ball aimlessly up the pitch. I miss the surge forward and unadulterated joy of when we score that sees me hugging anybody within range.I even miss the anti-Argyle chants, irrelevant as they currently are.

I miss Exeter City. And no amount of breathtakingly stunning football from precocious youngsters in a sparkling new stadium will ever change that.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Arsenal, Arsenal v Sheffield United, Arsene Wenger, Carlos Vela, Emirates Stadium, Exeter City

This is the third thread in the last month or so I’ve seen from Exeter City fans fed up that the local newspaper – the Express and Echo – still only posts up a teaser for their stories as opposed to the full article (usually a couple of paragraphs followed by the words ‘for the full story, see x day’s paper’).

The refusal to post full articles online is frustrating and it’s understandable that readers – especially Exeter exiles like myself who don’t have the option of buying the paper – are removing the Echo from their favourites site.

It’s also a shame. As a City fan, the Echo is a great resource for keeping up to date with news from the club. They also, unlike many counterparts, have a good website and a decent editorial standard applied to videos on the site (bar the player occasionally not working in Firefox). They’ve moved on vastly from the old approach of dumping any old video stuff and a good portion of their work is as good as some local TV journalism.

Which makes it even more maddening that users can’t access news stories on the day they’re published. It’s an incredibly short-sighted move, and one I’ve not seen any other local paper do (although that’s not saying others don’t).Can you imagine a national or large regional paper adopting the same attitude?

More to the point, their sister paper, the Western Morning News, puts up news articles in full and probably steals away a fair few online readers.

One of the contributors on the original thread fairly asks why the paper should put on online content for free when they’ve got a paper to sell. There’s a couple of simple answers here though.

Firstly, the news is available elsewhere, if you’re prepared to look for it. If I can access the story now or wait a day for a slightly more detailed report, I’ll probably take the one today. By waiting a day, the site loses out on potential readers.

Secondly, those who buy the paper are not necessarily going to be the same people reading the site online. If you’ve brought a copy of the paper, there is less incentive to go online. There is a decent amount of material to tempt the paper-buying reader onto the website, but it’s unlikely they’ll want to re-read the stories unless they have a pressing urge to comment on them.

In contrast, the web readers need an incentive to read online, and if they can’t read the news when they want to, they’ll as likely go elsewhere and not come back. As seems to be happening, judging by comments on Exeweb.

So, by taking the decision to delay the content for the sake of newspaper sales, the paper could be scoring an own goal, firstly by sending web-readers into the arms of rival papers. And with newspaper readerships declining, if the Echo tries to win back readers by opening up content online, they may find online-only readers have already gone elsewhere.

I’ve already got plenty of Devon-related feeds in my RSS reader to keep up with news from home. I can even get my Exeter City news direct from the club via Facebook updates. In short, I don’t actually need the Echo, but the Echo needs online readers like me.

As I’ve said – I do like the Echo’s website and want to read what’s going on in my hometown. But if I can’t access it on the day, then I, and others, will simply give up. And that would be a shame, give the quality of the writing and the website.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Exeter, Exeter City, Express and Echo, online news, RSS

So, after five seasons of languishing in non-league, Exeter City are finally back where they belong, after a tense one-nil win against Cambridge at Wembley. Unsurprisingly I’m a tad hungover today and have very little voice. To be honest, it’s still sinking in.

The run up to the game was a little strange for me. Last year, when City lost to Morecambe in the final, I was working as a journalist in Exeter and was churning out Wembley story after Wembley story and generally completely caught up in the whole buzz. Hell, my commentary from the semi-final even featured on an Exeter-themed reworking of Walk Like an Egyptian done by the morning DJs at the station I worked at. My life was Wembley, Wembley, Wembley.

Fast forward a year, and I’m now in London and having one of the busiest weeks at work since I started my new job (although it’s not really new, given I’ve been there for seven months). Weird as it may sound, I was so focused on work, I’d not had time to get caught up in the pre-game hype. Even on Saturday night I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow – I was that knackered.

Plus there was the lost from last year playing on my mind. Exeter had been to Wembley once and lost, and I really didn’t want that to happen again. Plus, in my stomach I had an unexplained pessimistic feeling that we were going to get hammered. Yes, I was excited and nervous, but there was also a gritty determination not too get too carried away.

Sunday started leisurely, as I ambled towards Hampstead for an excellent lunch in an Italian cafe. No alcohol was involved, as I wanted to be focused. Plus, the area around Wembley is not pleasant. The regeneration-in-progress for the area can be seen as you walk along Wembley Way, but it’s still a run-down part of London with local pubs that aren’t too friendly, and a lingering sense of menace if you walk too far from the Stadium.

Instead my friend Rob and I made our way to a Hampstead boozer – a pre-arranged meet with the other Exeter London Exiles – for a couple of drinks before the game. Again, there wasn’t a feeling amongst the fans that this was a day out, just a determination to cheer our team all the way to victory.

We were joined by my housemate and two more friend, including Megan, who’d only been to one other game: Tiverton Town at the Old Wembley in the FA Vase many years ago.

“So,” asked Megan, “what does it mean if you win and go up?”

I paused for a moment. “Well, it means we move up from visiting some absolute shit-holes to places that are slightly less shit-hole like.”

I’ve liked the Conference, but five years is a long time in non-league if you’ve not been there before. We’d come so close, I just wanted to be in the league again.

Stepping off the Jubilee line we found ourselves in the midst of a large number of Cambridge fans, and the difference was marked. They reminded me of how we felt last year: there was a buzz around them as they made their way to the stadium, but this was a day-tripping buzz. There were photos, there were lots of very cocky songs aimed at the Exeter fans, and many comments along the lines of “We’re at Wembley! Wow!”

In contrast, there were songs from the Exeter fans but there was less lighthearted enjoyment and fewer photos as we headed into the stadium, and once we took our seats the noise was focused. Last year, the singing was dissapated throughout the stadium. This year, with the bulk of singers behind the goal, there were no feelings of just being there and enjoying the day out: just a desire to win. Returning after a loss at Wembley does that to you.

And then the kick-off. The noise from the City fans made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and within the first ten minutes my voice was close to going, due to some incredibly loud singing.

Now, I’d love to be able to tell you about the game itself and give a calm, rational analysis, but that’s just impossible as it is a complete blur. I remember going mental when Rob Edwards headed us into the lead on 22 minutes. I can also tell you that the last 15 minutes were some of the tensest of my entire life, as Cambridge pushed forward for the equaliser. I have no idea what I was screaming at this stage, but I know for a fact I was making one hell of a lot of noise.

All around us, fans had given up on any pretence of sitting down and the chants were coming thick and fast. Cambridge were looking more threatening as they hoofed the ball towards their three large centre-forwards but each time we repelled their attack. And the team were remaining calm. There was no sticking the ball anywhere, the players were still passing the ball around and local hero, and contender for man of the match, Dean Moxey broke through with two minutes remaining and was unlucky not to score, thanks to a good save from Danny Potter.

And then came the tensest of the tense minutes as we got into injury time. The referee seemed to be toying with the fans, looking at his watch, raising his whistle to his mouth, and then playing on a bit longer. I have no fingernails left as a result of this.

When the final whistle eventually came, I’m not afraid to say that, for want of a better word, I went mental. Friends and strangers were hugged, my voice found extra strength to cheer louder and longer, and there may have even been a hint of a tear in my eye.

If we were enjoying it, then the players were on another level. Champagne was being sprayed all over the pitch and the team were soaking in the applause for all it was worth. I’ve no idea how long we spent cheering our heroes, or how long they stayed on the pitch, but by the time we made it back to the pub in Hampstead I was absolutely exhausted and is desperate need of a pint.

Or five.

I’m not surprised the barmaids asked us to tone down the singing a bit. We were making a lot noise. But there was no angry reaction. We quitened down and continued to drink and celebrate, albeit a bit quieter.

Of course no good football match is complete without a celebratory curry and my friend Ross and I made our way, somewhat woozily, to a curry house nearby my house for, in my case, a Saag Paneer that was well worth the wait, and a delicious naan. Another drink back home and a few games of Pro Evo, where I practically fell asleep on my sofa. I’m not sure what time I eventually made it to bed, but when I woke up I was still singing.

Exeter City: League Two. It sounds good.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Conference playoff final, Exeter City, Football League, Wembley