Roots Hall. Has it really come to this?

I woke up and I’m concerned. Not worried, but concerned. My usual, mental obsessions – the things that occupy way too much time in my head – have been displaced. I know that we didn’t expect much from an away trip to Bolton. Many of us are still scarred by the vidiprinter having to show us in words that we had conceded (EIGHT) in 1983. But yesterday was a different kind of scarring. A game in which we played okay, given that we have no form, and in which we had some structure, and which demonstrated the inevitability of authoring our own downfall, even in a game where we expected nothing. As Hayden Whyte raised his arm, and Matt Sadler stuck out a leg, there was a nihilistic logic at work. A logic played out against a lack of belief; believing in nothing; pessimism grounded in the soul.

I think that was one of the biggest shocks to me. That I don’t believe in this team. I don’t believe in its management. I don’t believe in the governance of the club. Maybe this just reflects life one year into the mismanagement of a pandemic, with its cloying claustrophobia, and my own lack of agency. As I religiously login to iFollow, all that I can do is watch the implosion mediated through the screen. I have nothing else, no ability to affect anything happening on the other side. All I have is tweeting and yelling into the void.

The lack of belief is accompanied by something like despair in my soul, as I realise how far the managed decline of this club has taken root. Swindon away and that Dean Keate’s goal feels like a blip in the course of two decades of stagnation. We feel like a club that is a sacrifice zone in the wider, political economy of football. A club in a town that feels hopeless, and that has been permanently impaired through an ongoing and structural disinvestment. We can argue over the causes of this in the governance of global football, commitments made based on ITV Digital monies, the rent (always, the rent), whatever. But we increasingly feel like a sacrifice zone, playing limited and limiting football in a tired ground, on a shoestring, giving other people’s youngsters game-time.

For a long time, I haven’t thought that there is more than this. I have wondered what must it have been like this between 1901-21, when we dropped out of the league, or between 1951-55, when we finished bottom or second bottom every season (winning 39 games in 4 years sounds soul destroying)? What was it like between 1963-78, never finishing higher than 6^th in Division 3? Then I remember what we have been living with since Swindon away.

And I come back to signature games, in my head. These feel like they define my understanding of the club, and I wonder what they felt like. Arsenal in 1933 feels like it became a signature game after the fact, at the final whistle, as we defined the idea of the giantkilling. I assume that winning away at Shrewsbury in April 1961, to return, finally, to Division 2, was immediately part of our DNA. The way my dad tells it, a hot night in August 1961, when we beat Newcastle United, was similar.

And then there was May 1981 and that win at Bramall Lane, which really mattered for days before, and lingered for years afterwards, in a way that Anfield didn’t, because in spite of the crushing disappointment, I knew deep down that Cup glory was an impossibility. Of course, there have been others – Bristol City in 1988, Gigg Lane in 1995, Sincil Bank in 1999, the Millennium Stadium in 2001. But it is Bramall Lane and a last gasp exit from relegation that sticks, as increasingly I see us looking down the barrel of non-league.

In October 1990, I travelled down to a League Cup game at Home Park with a bunch of friends, to see Plymouth lose to Forest. I remember one of my friends stating that if Plymouth were ever bad enough to be relegated out of the league, he would regard that as a reason to divorce them. I remember being incredulous. One of the other friends in the car was a Torquay United fan. I remember travelling away to Darlington and Swansea with him, and hanging on a phone in the students union at Bristol, listening to Torquay winning a penalty shootout in the 1991 League 2 play-off final against Blackpool (Bamber’s left foot). I remember how he felt when they secured their league status away at Barnet. I remember how empty it has felt for him since they failed to build on that and lost their league status. It has echoes with how my friends who support Chester, Notts County, Hereford and Hartlepool feel.

Even those who dropped out and came back, like my dear friend who follows Leyton Orient, do not celebrate that time outside the league. It is to be forgotten, or remembered with a shudder. They feel that it is less of an interregnum or an interruption, and more of a betrayal of the material history of something so central to their identity. And maybe it would be like Oxford or Bristol Rovers, but those clubs weren’t living with the realities of managed decline, in a pandemic that had damaged cash flow. Going down hoping to rebuild feels like a high-risk gamble for a stagnating club, and I would rather attempt that from 22^nd in football league (even if the reality next season might be worse). Otherwise visibility, finance, belonging, meaning all risk crumbling.

And I know that we are 8 points clear of Southend, and 11 clear of Grimsby. I know that we have to play both of them, and Scunthorpe and Colchester. I know that we have to play all of them away, and at least we have a structure on the road. I know that we are likely to pick up points here-and-there, in our last 11 games. I know that our goal difference gives us an edge, in particular with James Clarke at the back.

And yet I am drawn back to our appalling form and our inability to keep clean sheets and score goals. And we have lost Hayden Whyte and Dan Scarr with no natural backup for the manager’s favoured 3 at the back. So losing on Tuesday feels immense in the context of this club’s season: falling to 5 points ahead, with worse form and worse confidence, and will any of us, including the team and its manager, believe? What happens then, if the team shows itself that, just like in the Barrow game, it cannot play a rival under pressure and weight of expectation?

But we have a team with no form, no confidence, no self-belief, limited patterns and partnerships, no drive through central midfield to support the attack, and a manager learning the ropes. I listen to or look at either the chair or manager and find myself thinking “do they believe?”, and what is it that they believe in? For too long, we have been on the back foot, managing resources, living hand-to-mouth, stagnating in Division 3 and now Division 4, feeling that we do not have the opportunity (the right?) to go on the front foot.

So, as we approach one of the biggest games in history, I question whether we are going to bore-draw our way to survival, or whether there is another way, which capitalises upon our limited strengths (out wide)? And I know the players and the manager will not want a relegation in their histories and their career records. I know the players and the manager will have a sense of the magnitude of this game, and I know that they will care. But even so, we can care and not believe; care and not set ourselves up to succeed; care and be to defensive to sustain ourselves.

And so Tuesday feels immense in the context of this club’s history. This generation’s Bramall Lane plus some, 40 years on. And the thought of losing on Tuesday feels immense in the context of this club’s history. As does the thought of not giving ourselves the chance to win, and to build something. I always thought Bramall Lane gave us the opportunity of Anfield. What will Roots Hall give us?

What a question. Has it really come to this?