S25/26 | The Official Match Thread | Coventry 1 Swansea 0 | Att: 30,139 | Boxing Day | The EFL Championship | The CBS Arena

[Smurph]

Lol, I’m made of more sterner stuff now, ever since the Swans was sold by the sellouts to the down and outs way back in 2016.

When I jumped on board even further back in 2005, I was a starry eyed dreamer of what could be achieved with our team on the pitch and the club as a whole.

I wasn’t a bona fide Swans supporter, or a football fan in general, when the dark days of Tony Petty engulfed the city, so I was spared the torment that the fans, the club, and the city itself endured at the time.

By the time I switched from being an entry level Arsenal fan in 2003 into a more dedicated and invested supporter of my home club and team, the sun was already shining brightly on our city in football terms.

However, those dark clouds that had been banished to the horizon, for so many years after the heartbreak of Petty with his attempts to destroy the club, are never too far away.

Cue the sellouts in 2016, and all that went on with Jenkins and Co’s decision to hand over the keys of the club to buyers who had no idea how to drive a milk float let alone a Ferrari.

That sordid sale, with the subsequent decline which eventually led to our relegation from the Premier League, and the many years since, languishing in the Championship, was the first real test of my loyalty to the club.

I could so easily have gone back to supporting Arsenal, a Premier League level club who, more often than not, were always vying for the top four Champions League qualification positions.

However, this was not an option for me, and I boldly made the decision to stick with my home club “through thick and thin”.

Granted, these aren’t the worst of times by far, as many a poster on here will attest to.

But the sale of the club in the manner it was sold, and the gaslighting of the fans at the time by some of our own, about the new owners being “next level”, really did leave a substantial psychological scar in my psyche.

I’ve learned what it really means to be a football fan, and being able to take the rough with the smooth more often than not when supporting a club and team such as ours.

Hopefully, the dark days of Kaplan and Levien are now in the rear view mirror with the new owners on board, and we can finally look up with anticipation at promotion rather than downwards with trepidation at relegation.

In other words COYS.

Lovely post, I enjoyed reading it.

It's never a dull moment supporting the Swans. I remember the day at Wembley when the final whistle went and I turned to my mate and mentioned that I never thought I'd ever see the day that we promoted back to the top division.

 

[SeaJack]

Agreed.

That play off final was a very special and memorable moment in time that stays with me to this day, although I can’t say that I was there at the Wembley stadium itself unfortunately.

What I can say, though, is that I was there for the inauguration home friendly against Fulham at the newly built White Rock, soon to be, Liberty Stadium.

That was my first taste of football in my home town watching my home town team, and it was a pure joy to see the Swans producing what I felt was a close approximation of the performances that Arsenal were putting out there on a weekly basis in the Premier League.

It was at that excitingly electrified moment, that I realised I no longer had to simply watch the beautiful football that Arsenal was producing from afar, as it was being played in my own back yard.

The rest as they say, is history, and I’ve never looked back.

Looking forward, I’m now starting to look forward to seeing us compete more successfully in this league we still find ourselves in, especially since last night’s exceptional win against a tricky opponent in Oxford Utd.

Of course, I’m trying not to get too ahead of myself, but I do feel that the corner has now been turned in terms of our relegation fears.

There is one overriding question that remains, however, and that is how high up the table can we go now we’ve put the afterburners on?

To me it’s not inconceivable for us to reach the top 6 by the end of the season, but I’ve been dismayed and disappointed too many times before to get my hopes up too much.

So for me, it’s just a case of watch, wait and wonder at what might be, rather than getting too excited at the real prospect of a promotion push this time around.