The Biggest One Yet

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Failure today will mean conference football for next season. Success will mean continuation of our league status. We can only do one thing and our future is in our own hands – it is up to the sixteen players that Brian Flynn picks in his match day squad to deliver that success for the fans of this football club.

They will be backed by over 9300 Swansea fans all wanting the same thing – 90 minutes of committment, effort, passion and most of all, more goals than Hull City can score. Delivery of those four items and we will ensure that we can plan next season’s trips to Hull, Kidderminster and Yeovil rather than another trip to Shrewsbury.

Failure to deliver what we are looking for brings unimaginable things. No-one would ever have envisaged that we could face losing our league status – let alone within such a short period of beating the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool at the Vetch as we competed with the very best.

I have no doubt that goals at Exeter this afternoon will make so many mobile phones beep at the Vetch that we will swear blind that there is an air raid going on buy the players have to do their best to shut this out certainly until their job has been won. I know that Brian Flynn has entrusted one person at the Vetch to keep him informed of events at St James Park and will only believe things when they come from his mouth. And yes there will be the people there who listen to their radios while the game is on and then mis-hear what has been said.

Goals from Exeter will bring a reaction from the crowd all round the ground – celebration if they are losing, despair if they are winning and we are not. But the game is over 90 minutes and even if Exeter are two up inside ten minutes there is no reason to panic (unless of course we are five down by that stage!)

A goal from Hull will bring a reaction from the crowd and that worries me. A goal against is not the end of the world, there could well be time to come back from it and, as usual, pitch invasions or missiles are not called for. The same goes for if we score, let’s celebrate the goal in the normal fashion and leave the pitch celebrations until the end of the game.

And if the worst happens then we are a conference team. Something none of us want to imagine but it could happen. And most of us will be back next season if that happens we all know that. It’s in the blood, the same as it was back in 1981, it’s still there we are Jacks and we have to take any defeat with dignity and not let the club down. It’s been a battle created in the main by those that have departed our shores which stripped the club dry – ironically if we commiserate then one of those said people is celebrating but he ain’t important in all this.

We all know this is as big as it gets for us. It is bigger for us than the ‘glory hunters’ seeing their side win the Premiership title on Sky or appearing in a major cup final, it is the one thing that has united us all over the course of the last few months.

If it goes wrong, we point out where we all feel it went wrong over the course of the season but for around 2 hours come 3pm this afternoon we put everything we have into ensuring this team stays up – it’s what we want the players to do and we have to do the same.

There is optimism within the Vetch that we will survive this. I spoke to someone on Thursday who said that he has been sick and worried for three weeks but all of a sudden this week that feeling went and he just knows that we are going to win this game. We all have to believe that.

May 3rd 2003 will go down in the history books of this football club – let’s hope it is for all the right reasons.

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