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York City fans have had to endure a lot over the last many seasons- I won't bore you with all the details as I plan to bore you with something else, but suffice to say that the team avoided relegation by the outer layer of skin on our teeth (and teeth don't even have skin) last season and nearly landed back in the almost inescapable National League North that they'd languished in for much too long.
At least you knew what you were getting. Pretty much constant disappointment of the deepest kind, punctuated by the occasional vain hope, followed by deeper disappointment and the discovery that disappointment can burrow much further than you imagined.
I was glad to idly support a team that took real guts to get behind. All you glory seekers who support teams from places you've not even been to, because they had a chance of winning the First Division in 1978 don't know what football is about. It's about supporting the team nearest to your birth place and then having to endure the pain of them being shit, but you don't really care that much because you don't like football that much and hardly go and see them. That is what football is about and all true fans know it.
So this season is a bit of a shocker for me, because York seem to be actually good and I am having to contemplate the possibility that they might actually win the league and get the one automatic promotion place. Not since they were the first team to ever get more than 100 points in the football league have I experienced anything like it. When York get promoted it's by fluking their way into the last play-off spot and then referees failing to spot that the goal they scored to win the final was offside, not by being consistently good.
What you can rely on with York is that they will hold a one goal lead for the whole match before conceding two goals in injury time. Hope followed by disappointment and the opposite of the Herring Manoeuvre, where you only try at a sport right at the end, lulling your opponents into a false sense of security and not wasting your energy when most games are won by the final point.
Today I was out shopping with the kids but was checking on the game and occasionally listening to the commentary on my phone. We were playing the team my brother supports, Halifax Town, who scored early against the run of play, weathered a couple of attacks and then in the second half dominated the game. York were back to normal. In many ways I was relieved.
But as we approached the house, laden down with two heavy pumpkins and some skellingtons (we'd been to Sainsburys for Halloween stuff and I'd also done some murders) injury time had started and it was surely over.
Only if you haven't heard of the Herring Manoeuvre.
Because in the 91st minute York equalised and then five minutes later scored the winner. What could Halifax do? Nothing. Because if you score a winner in the last minute there is no time for a response. Herring. Manoeuvre.
Glad we finally have a manager that understands sport.
Forest Green drew, the losers (well drawers), so York returned to the top of the league. I am hoping a terrible pandemic now grips the world, meaning all lower league football is called off and the current league positions are the final ones. Fingers crossed.
Sure, I am a York fan, so I know the script. This is the hope that they give us. Disappointment is inevitable and doubtless we will manage to engineer a situation where we end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but for now, still in the place of hope I am confused and bedazzled.
Losing a goal lead in injury time is the kind of thing York do. But then Halifax are more York than York. But at last my brother chose to support them because that's where he was born. I should really be supporting Pocklington FC, but my head was swayed by the bright lights of the big city. God tried to warn me off by setting fire to the Minster, but screw God. I am a Minsterman until I die. So for about five more years.
We could be in the Premiership by then.
Or in whatever division is four below the National League. Place your bets.
