A Son of the Rock

Yesterday was strange. It was the first Saturday in a good while I hadn’t felt that peculiar admixture of anticipation and fear that marks the run-in to a potential promotion. The fear is nothing like that which attends a relegation fight, I hasten to add; but it’s still there. (Curiously, the joy when avoiding relegation can be greater than on winning promotion. But not this year.)

Yesterday there was none of that, “Should I check the score while the game is on and maybe jinx it? Or wait till the game is over,” business.

What I did feel was a kind of emptiness. I almost had a sense of loss. In part that’s because, for us, the season is over and there are no games to look forward to until July (summers without World Cups or European Championships are deserts) but mostly it was because it very likely won’t get as good as that final promotion push again for years, if ever.

Back in August when I started this blog it was mainly to post about writing and only to use Dumbarton FC as a kind of filler when I needed something else to write about. (So much for self delusion.) But I certainly never thought that I’d end up chronicling a promotion season, especially a Championship. All I really hoped for was a play off spot.

Yes, after the first game at Airdrie in the Challenge Cup I was confident we could play attractive attacking football – as is our heritage – but I was worried that defensive frailties would do for us. The diminutive nature of Derek Carcary and Stevie Murray was also a concern as the Third Division is a hurly burly kind of league not generally kind to smaller statures.

What the manager, players and club have done over the season – but especially in the last quarter with the long, no-goals-conceded run – is a magnificent achievement given where we were this time last year. I still don’t think it’s really sunk in.

Yet I find myself quite optimistic about our prospects of doing reasonably well in Division Two next season. (Fatal, fatal thought.)