Swindon Town 2001-2003

Swindonlog.com is no longer being updated.

After two fine years updating this weblog, recording some traumatic times and some wonderful ones at the County Ground and around the country, I have decided to call it a day. I'm moving away from the town, and simply won't be able to consume the media, and catch the gossip, which helped fill these pages over the last two years.

The archives will remain, a chronicle of two amazing years. And I'll still be coming back to the County Ground on Saturdays. It's a place which, at the time of writing, looks set for some happier times very soon, and there's no way I'd miss out on those.

Many thanks to all the readers who made writing Swindonlog so worthwhile, for all the comments (and the criticism when I got it wrong :-)). I look forward to continuing to argue with you all over at the TrustSTFC website or at MyOnlySwindon.com, and seeing a few of you at the games.

Swindon Town 2 Luton Town 1

Back at the start of it all last August, we might have hoped we’d end up mid-table. By the end of October, reaching tenth seemed a hopeless impossibility. By January, a few of us thought we’d be going up.

You can’t argue this was a boring season, that’s for sure.

The final game of the term summed things up perfectly: Town flattering to deceive, not taking chances and then suffering a complete sucker punch. But then, just like the story of the season as a whole, we got our act in order and came back strongly.

An absolute peach of a goal from Stefani Miglioranzi – celebrating, perhaps, finally getting a longer-term contract – brought us level. And then Sam Parkin, who took so many player of the year awards before kick-off it was getting embarrassing, put us up just before the break with a great header.

But, as is often the case with these pretty meaningless final games of the season, it was what was happening on the periphery of the match that was most entertaining.

Most people at the match will remember most clearly the harrowing scenes long after the final whistle, when Miglioranzi removed first his shirt to throw to the crowd, then his socks and then – God help us – his shorts, before jogging the width of the pitch to get indoors.

But there were also the farewells to Eric Sabin (best chant of the match goes to the Town End, with a rendition of “Are you watching QPR?” after an Eric Special spun high over the crossbar) and, of course, Danny Invincibile. The Aussie, with still no news of where he’ll play next season, made his farewell a few minutes from the end. Given the chance for his own cheer by a substitution, the crowd obliged with a standing ovation. I’m sure most of us remember his goal, two long years ago, that pretty much kept us up, even if we also recall a few infuriating, lethargic displays as well.

We shouldn’t forget that day two years ago, or the following midweek when we were all glued to our radios to hear Bristol Rovers cocking things up at their game, to make our final match at Stoke meaningless. To be well clear of that this season, on a drastically reduced budget, is a testament to Andy King’s abilities as a talent spotter and, yes, a manager.

For all the time I’ve written this blog, I’ve been gently chided by longer-standing Town fans for not having been around during the good ‘ol days of the mid 90s, when Town briefly made the top flight. And they have a point: I remember the team, I’ve got the videos, and to see Town fall from those heights to where they are today must have been tough.

But I suspect that for Town to really rally and recover to where it should be, it’s going to require both the club and its supporters to accept the way things are, rather than how things once (briefly) were. The club has only recently realised this – after two bouts of administration – but many of the fans, particularly the stay-away fans, are still in denial.

If so, they're not the only fans in the league who have chosen to dwell on a glorious past rather than the more miserable present. There's a piece in the Guardian today about Nottingham Forest - now there's a team that's fallen a way - that states: "there is the unmistakable feeling... that Forest have finally re-invented themselves as a club that wants to look to the future rather than dwell on the past." And that's my big hope for Swindon Town next season.

Final farewells

The end of the season approaches, and I'm pretty certain I'll have a tear in my eye at the end of tomorrow's match. Not because Danny's off, you understand, although I'm sure quite a few folk will be sorry to see him leave, remembering some of the fine performances he's put in, and forgetting a few of the others...

No, I'll be getting all emotional because I'm moving away from Swindon in a couple of months, and this will likely be my last game as a season ticket holder. I've had an wonderful, infuriating, exciting and despair-filled few years following Town, and don't intend to abandon the team - I'll be living in London, so hopefully catching a few away games and the odd match at the County Ground. It just wouldn't be sensible to buy a season ticket, especially now there are no shift tickets, as I won't get up the M4 enough. But you don't go through the mill that we've all been through in the last few seasons without developing a lasting bond with the side, even if you are, like me, not a local.

But it does raise a question about what I do with Swindonlog. What started out as a way to learn how to build a weblog for a piece I was writing, and indulge my new-found love for all things Swindon Town, has turned into something of an obsession. To my surprise, it has also become pretty popular, with hundreds of people looking in every week. I've even had complaints when I've not written anything, or irritated readers by saying something particularly daft.

But it relies on me being around Swindon, catching the gossip, reading the paper and listening to the radio. It's going to be hard to do all that from sarf London. Should I just give up, and close the site down?

I'd rather try some other, more innovative, ideas first. So: I know there's at least one person who might want to contribute to Swindonlog. Are there any others? Who knows: if we could get half a dozen people together, we could keep it going and maybe even turn it into something more democractic and active than it is now. It would be easy to set up the system to get a few Town fans contributing, if the volunteers thought they could keep it going for the whole season. All you'd need is a little time in front of a net-connected PC two or three days a week (if there's a few of us, it'll be easier) and a love for Swindon Town.

I've long thought football clubs should be run by their fans: perhaps I should put the theory of fan power to the test by seeing if any fans would be willing to form a mysterious cabal, and take this site on. Hey, it's not going to be like running Swindon Town itself, but it'll be a hell of a lot cheaper. Any interest?

Looks like Eric's off

The Eric Sabin fanclub that sits near me in the Nationwide is going to be horrified. From this piece on the official site, it looks like Eric Sabin won't be at the County Ground next year.

The Frenchman, as we know, was offered a one-year deal on reduced terms from this year. Today, King says the player needed to be playing every week on the wages he was taking - and his strikerate simply isn't good enough. "Eric has indicated to me that he won't take the new contract," King is quoted as saying. "I need to find two strikers for next season".

To that end, King confirms he's been taking a look at Junior Agogo, although bagging the former Sheffield Wednesday player will require some kind of fee, as he is not yet 24.

Big changes to the league for next season

Lots of detail here from the Beeb on the proposed changes to the Football League, announced earlier this week. The measures that got the most attention were to do with clubs going into administration: had the new rules been introduced four years ago, Town could well now have been expelled from the league, as that's the new punishment for any club that goes into administration twice in the space of three years or less. Needless to say, Mark Devlin tells the Adver he doesn't think that's a good idea.

Town's finances appear to be more stable now, and new wage caps (60% of turnover, introduced for third division teams next season, for us and the first division the season after) should help ensure the days of mad wages for players are now over. The rule will create a direct link between the amounts supporters (not board members) spend on the team, which is bound to make the game a little more fair. Towns will get something closer to the team their supporters deserve, you'd hope.

But here's another thing that could boost the finances of Swindon, and many other sides: the extension of the play-offs from four to six teams. That means the final play-off place goes to the team in eighth place - and this year that's only seven points off where we are today. Instead of the pretty gentle glide into the end of the season, Town could have been pushing for a play-off place this year - and that's bound to get the crowds up, even if we don't make it.

Of course, we'll all be hoping that we'll be gunning for a little higher than that. We might not be looking at automatic promotion, but it's worth noting teams in third and fourth get to sit out the first round of the new one-game-only play-offs, and get home advantage in the second round. What's for sure is all this is bound to get the interest levels, and crowd levels, up for a lot of sides.

Plymouth No 2 slams his players

Here's an interesting insight into how at least one opposition manager wanted his side to play against Town. Plymouth assistant manager Kevin Summerfield has been sounding off about his players "forgetting" their instructions on Wednesday night. "We had a gameplan, we knew they had big centre-backs, yet we forgot what we had talked about and threw high balls at them," he moans to the BBC.

Do two Juniors make a senior?

The Barnet site says Andy King has been down to Underhill to run the rule over Junior Agogo, the former Sheffield Wednesday and QPR striker who has bagged 19 goals for the London side in the Conference this season. Could he be the replacement for the departing Danny Invincibile?