On… promotion?

A blessing or a curse?

“Be careful what you wish for.”
Aesop

A Premier League football. Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash.

CONTEXT: Millwall are one game away from potential promotion to the Premier League

When did you first encounter the club you support?

My earliest memory of ‘Millwall’ is being in the back of the car on a hot sunny day, someone talking on the radio, and my dad telling me that his team would be in the top division for the first time ever.

It’s a really strong childhood memory, and I have the feeling, if not the exact recollection, that Dad was incredibly excited. I can imagine he was; my impression is that most of his Saturdays up until his mid 20s had been work in the morning, pub in the afternoon with his mates, watching Millwall in the second and third tier, then pub for the rest of the day and night…

… and who could argue with that?

Dad must have felt pride, excitement, and the glee of the underdog come good when we went up… especially after this documentary... but he must also have felt that this was a team that truly reflected the Millwall identity… direct, hard, aggressive (“Terry’s gonna get ya!”), attack-minded, never shirking…

… exactly the kind of team we have now.

That first ‘top flight’ season we went toe to toe with ‘United, West Ham, Liverpool’… Spurs, Everton… and I saw the likes of John Barnes, Chris Waddle, Tony Adams, Paul Gascoigne, Trevor Francis and Neville Southall at the Old Den… we even went top!*

Can you imagine being an eight-year-old lad, surrounded by cigarette smoke, broken concrete, thousands of hard men screaming their heads off, and watching a toy donkey being ripped to pieces as a ‘welcome’ to George Graham’s Arsenal?

But it only lasted two seasons, we went down, had a couple of near misses then bought the Russians and spiralled down again, and until Super Neil Harris** took over as manager we were yo-yo-ing instead of slowly, incrementally improving in a stable fashion.

You could argue we’ve had it relatively easy after top division relegation, because we’ve all seen what promotion to the Premier League can do to sides — just look at Leicester this season, and what happened to Wigan, Bolton, Oldham and even Charlton, who by the way will never, ever, beat Millwall.

So we know promotion can be a blessing and a curse… the kind of thing that could ruin a stable, happy club like ours.

Regardless, we’re all looking at a 12.30pm kick off and the table, and the connotations of different results, and turning ourselves into a cross between Pythagoras, Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind and Nostradamus… if only we had Rachel Riley*** to help us understand it all!

Look, the excitement of potential promotion is incredible — I’ve even written a great, funny heart-wrenching novel about it. But putting aside really-should-have-an-agent fiction with a South London edge, do we actually need it? Could we lose what we already have?

I would love Millwall to beat Oxford United. I would love Ipswich to lose and Middlesborough to lose, and failing that, I would love Millwall to win a thrilling play-off final at Wembley, and maybe for some of our fans to do something to a certain statue while they are there.

I would love us to get promoted. I would love young boys and girls to have the same experience I had, seeing the best players, seeing their parents excited, getting the shirts, getting the autographs, feeling the buzz.

But it doesn’t matter if we don’t.

Because one of the best bits of advice my parents ever gave me, possibly while I was in the back of that same car, was “it doesn’t matter what happens, as long as you are true to yourself, and you try your best”.

And that’s what we already have here. A team, manager and club that is true to who we are, and that always try their best.

So whatever happens, we’ve already won.

COYL

++ Do you want us to be promoted? Do you think we will be? And if we do get promoted, what songs do you think our crowd should sing really loud, so people can hear them on TV while Gary Neville or Jamie Carragher are commentating?

* And if you’d like to experience this sensation, I can recommend a good novel that recreates that exact game.
** Don’t underestimate how much we owe him for where we are now – and the ownership.
*** I wrote Rachel ‘Reeves’ by mistake the first time — can you imagine trying to explain it to her?!!!!

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PS: Forget everything I’ve just written — there’s only way to go.