Friday, May 04, 2007

A time for reflection…the end of one season and the beginning of another…

As the football league season draws to a close over the weekend (well for us anyway), time has come to reflect on what has been another eventful season for the Cobblers. Back in August, hopes were high that John Gorman would produce his promised free-flowing, attacking football but most would certainly have settled for consolidation and stability.

Gorman’s ideas never really came to fruition after the opening day’s entertaining 2-2 draw at Crewe and it was probably too soon for him to come back into management. He gave it a good go but resigned in December with the club in danger of relegation.

Since then, Stuart Gray has turned the club around and attracted a group of hungry youngsters to the club while managing to hold onto Mark Bunn, the player of the year this season. Luke Chambers’ loss to Forest has been totally forgotten thanks to the outstanding Mark Hughes, his replacement. Alex Pearce has been solid since joining from Reading and Doctor Deuchar and Simon Cox’s loan spells have brought the fire power we needed after Scott McGleish’s sale to Wycombe and Andy Kirk’s loss of touch. Oh, and that oh so tragic loss of James Quinn!

Gray has taken us to a solid mid-table position and there’s still the outside chance we could finish in the top half. The lowest possible final position is 16th and I think we still would have taken that back at Christmas!

And so as “White Coat Day” draws the curtain on the 2006/07 season we can look back on a topsy turvey campaign and look ahead to an exciting summer where Stuart Gray can really start to mould his squad.

As one season ends, another begins as summer kicks in. I found out yesterday that my girlfriend is a big liar, but in a very good and funny way fortunately.

The roller blade thing, as I slightly expected, was a ruse and I needed nothing of the sort despite a car journey to the beach where Ti was still trying to convince me that there was a link between the sandy shores of Lee-on-Solent and roller blades!

But it turns out that the surprise was simple but brilliant. All evening Ti had been worrying about getting to the beach for 8:20pm and when the plan unfolded I realised why. The sun set yesterday at 8:25pm and our timing was just right and chilling out on the pebbles while watching the gloriously red sun depart for another day was just what was needed…I think I was a bit tired for roller blades anyway!

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