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WE'VE COME A LONG, LONG WAY TOGETHER 13-3-06
Apologies to Brighton boy, Mr Fat Boy Slim, on plagiarising some of his words for this week's title to my rant but, when you reflect over the last twenty years of ups and downs of our beloved football club, we sure have come a very long way together and, it could have been oh so very different and may well have not happened at all.
History is an extremely interesting subject, especially when that passage of history you are examining is about something you passionately cherish and love. Like all great sagas and dramas there are good times, bad times and occasional times where so little happens it's not newsworthy enough to record for posterity, never mind stop one from yawning continuously, bored out of your wits. It's been my experience in life, as I approach my latter 40's, that something good and positive can usually come from a bad situation. A statement duly illustrated by the trials and tribulations surrounding Boro during the moody dark days of mid 1986.
Remember the effect of that infamous lock and chain which was placed around the blood red bars of those iconic Ayresome Park gates that fateful day in 1986, when our Beloved were in the throws of liquidation?
A symbolic lock placed there by the Official Receiver's agent, one David Storey, because our great football club was totally and utterly insolvent. We were skint, raggy-arsed and ready for a march into total oblivion to join the other failed legions of the Football League's historical outcasts like Accrington Stanley. The ignominy of being just another throw-away football club, in the midst of the throw-away society, after a hundred and ten years of history which commenced it's passage in 1876 was too much to bare.
Luckily, for us all, the passions stirred in the hearts and souls of Teessiders and there was enough bile and venom left in the veins of the diehards to perform a modern day miracle. Our knight in shining amour, poetically, was a young local lad by the name of Steve Gibson, a self-assured, self-made millionaire who symbolised the epitome of the working class dream. My team are in trouble, so I'll put my money were my mouth and heart lie. Deservedly, he is now a veritable working class hero and untouchable Smoggy God.
So, on that fateful day in 1986 when a fresh-faced, young and enthusiastic Steve Gibson, ably aided by Graham Fordy, symbolically removed that heavy brass and chrome padlock from the gates of glory it became an image of hope, renewal and rebirth.
In essence, Boro restarted their history with a clean slate and the removal of that hardened padlock, probably with a shackle and lock mechanism made from Teesside steel, gave hope to the industrial heartland of Cleveland. It unleashed a slumbering giant previously shackled by a total lack of boardroom ambition and inventiveness and allowed Steve Gibson's long term vision to take hold and his passion became our passion, his dreams - our dreams.
Hope sprung eternal on Teesside. The only way was forward and upward and the dreams got bigger by the day as the roller coaster ride began with Bruce Rioch's wonderful "Fly me to the Moon brigade".
It was also in itself a catalyst for the kind of upheaval and reformation never before seen during the previous century long history of Middlesbrough Association Football Club. An entity that was formed in the glorious birth of organised league or association football in the latter part of the 1800's, by local people, from the Cricket club who wanted an outlet for their youthful vigour and the new game of football was a perfect way to keep fit.
That first ever game, a 1-1 draw, held at a pitch within the bounds of that little piece of Victoriana in Middlesbrough, Albert Park, specifically at the Old Archery Ground, against a team from the local rugby union club the Tees Wanderers. For a short while we even had two league teams playing in Middlesbrough, when a breakaway club formed as Ironopolis who wanted to play the game at the professional level, while Boro stayed true to their amateur roots.
The move to Boro's symbolic home, Ayresome Park, began with a showcase friendly game against Scotland's Glasgow Celtic on Tuesday 3rd September in 1903. It coincided with the club becoming professional and we prospered in the early years of the vibrant energy driven twentieth century. Culminating when we finished third in the first division, just missing out on the Championship in season 1913-14, when the outbreak of war robbed a promising team of greater things.
Trouble was, as legend had it, we were apparently under the hypnotic haze of a gypsy curse, which stopped the club from winning anything major during their ninety-two year tenure at Ayresome Park in front of the Angels.
Mid '86 was a traumatic time in the annals of Smoggy history and there were questions to be asked and answered. Would the final game of that sad relegation season of 1985 to 1986, against Shrewsbury Town, be the final kick of a ball anywhere by a Boro player? And, would the 3-0 win against Millwall at home the week before, in front of only 5.484 paying customers, be the last game ever at Ayresome Park, ironically a win which lifted the spirits and gave a faint whiff of survival hope?
There's always hope when you support the Boro. It should be written under the red lion on our insignia.
That subsequent doom filled relegation into the old Third Division for only the second time in our history, along with Carlisle United and Fulham, had very ominous overtones for the future of football on Teesside. It drove the club into a spiralling debt crisis and insolvent bankruptcy.
Truth was that the club had been very poorly administered at board room level for a very long time with nails driven into the coffin well before that fateful day against Shrewsbury on May the 3rd 1986. Afterwards the bank came calling, dressed in black and holding a book full of red ink, with the Grim Reaper and his malevolence in attendance.
Strangely, the legacy of Willie Maddren's unsuccessful reign as manager was a canny acumen at recognising future stars, ending with a plethora of high quality players like Slaven, Mowbray, Pallister, Pears, Ripley, Cooper and Laws.
But, in the dark days all appeared to be without a job along with the other lost souls in the dole queue or scrambling to attract a suitor in the close season holiday period with the future uncertain and fragile. Everything was up in the air and nobody appearing to know what the hell was really happening and rumour and misinformation stoked the fires of despair around Middlesbrough. In the end they all proved to be mainstays at the club in the ensuing rolling success that followed Bruce Rioch taking the reigns at the rebirth.
Just like everybody else during that period of Boro's history, I was totally and utterly crestfallen, angry, confused and heartbroken. Especially as I was then living on the other side of the World, in Western Australia's furnace like Pilbarra region, and only got the news from my Dad on the phone or from snippets of press cuttings he'd scissored out of the Gazette and the Pink.
But, as you all know, the rest is history beginning for Middlesbrough when the clock started ticking again in 1986. Just take a good look at us now!
Playing at a magnificent new stadium at the Riverside, we've broken our silverware duck are established in the EPL, and are becoming seasoned European campaigners. We are quite possibly on the verge of something extremely special against AS Roma at the Stadio Olympico on Wednesday night.
Just reflect on how far we have come from those dark dire days of 1986 and smile!
We have come a long, long way together and the hope will always stir in our souls.
Enjoy your Roman adventure Marras, oh and... Come On Boro!
Enough said!
ErimusRed.
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