Left Pie-On: May

[illustration: Adam Poole]

The Notts are staying up.

Three days removed from Boundary Park and I’m still not sure it’s sunk in. I mean, I can look at those five words, read them, understand their meaning, but I think I'm only now starting to grasp the enormity of them. Looking at the League One table and seeing Notts County finish three points above the relegation is quite the sight to behold, particularly given that by as recently as mid-March, Tranmere had left us flat out for a count of ten, bottom of the table and seven points adrift of safety.

Buoyed by consecutive home wins against in-form sides Crawley and Swindon Town, the task for the regular season’s final Saturday was, on paper, quite simple. Get a point. Simply drawing the game would ensure another season in this division. It was in our own hands, a small miracle in itself. There were 27 different, realistic permutations going into the last day of the season – only one could see us drop. I’d say it was a simple as that but you’d know I was lying.

Notts supporters had snapped up over 3,500 tickets for the trip to Greater Manchester for Oldham Athletic – a quite simply gargantuan effort given the nine months of abuse we'd suffered before it. Month after month, game after game there were comments on social media from people saying they were done with the club, but everyone had come together for the last game of the season in the hope of being the extra body required to ensure survival. The noise created was ferocious, one that still raises the hairs on my arms when I think back.

Of course, being the last away day of the season, fancy dress was optional. Giant hot dogs, escaped convicts (in-keeping with the club’s Great Escape theme), Mario and Luigi, Scooby Doo and his gang, and American wrestling royalty were all represented on this most nerve-shredding day of the season.

Notts fans? Not a scooby.

The first half was a tense affair. Some Notts players were clearly playing the occasion rather than the game and it made for some tense periods of play. This transferred itself to the travelling Countymaniacs (sorry, still in Hulk Hogan mode), the County contingent who became increasingly anxious as the game panned out. 0-0 at half time was of course only half the job done, but obviously there'd be more twists in the tail to come.

There was actually seven minutes of the afternoon where that one dreaded outcome from the afternoon stood as a reality. I say seven minutes, it felt more like seventy. When Adam Lockwood looped in a header over the despairing Bartosz Bialkowski in goal, we were down. Gone. Goals for Tranmere Rovers and Crewe against Bradford City and Preston North End respectively meant that we had to take the situation by the scruff of the neck by ourselves to rescue matters.

And so Shaun Derry and Greg Abbott’s man did, in potentially the most ironic of circumstances. I can’t even tell you how much hair has been collectively ripped out through 2013/14 thanks to some outrageously poor officiating. As ever, around now I attach the tired disclaimer that we were in our position thanks to our own shortcomings, not those of referees. But my word, we’ve been hard done so many times that it only makes our survival all the more hard-earned. Jamal Campbell-Ryce, a rampant marauder of wings, a thunderbastard going forward for so much of the season, jinked his way forward before clipping a ball into the area. It rebounded off the arms of Johnathan Grounds – a block barely any different from those which we’ve seen waved away so many times already this year.

The referee’s whistle blew, and if the seven preceding minutes had felt like an eternity, then I’m certain the referee pointed to the penalty spot in slow motion. Did the cry from more than three and a half thousand Magpies behind the goal have an impact at all in the referee blowing his whistle? I’d certainly like to think so.

our columnist (centre, in yellow) after Notts crucial spot-kick

Now, over the years with my friend Sean Redgate, there’s very little ground we haven’t covered across the country together watching this team. Every so often the nerves will get the better of me and I can’t even force myself to watch a penalty kick. Notable ones include Hamza Bencherif across the river in the League Cup, and Danny Haynes earlier this campaign at Swindon. Both were missed. As those around me celebrated the decision to award a penalty however, I could only slump to my seat unable to move. Usually Sean would commentate, to the effect of who was stepping up, that everyone was outside the box, that the run up had begun…

Not this time. But the roar that went up moments later is something that will stick with me and those in attendance for the rest of my life. Alan Sheehan had dispatched the kick into the top corner – our rock all season long scoring the goal that set us on our way to staying up. It shouldn’t have been any other way given his consistency over the campaign.

Things got a bit rosier from there on in. The party could begin. Aside from our hosts going down to ten men, thus easing the pressure on ourselves, not too far away Preston were now out of sight against Crewe. Bizarrely, North End winning had felt like the banker at the end of the day. After all, they were playing for a prime Play-Off position against a Crewe side who most would have predicted beforehand to drop to League Two. But instead it was Tranmere Rovers who would suffer that fate. Letting an early lead slip, two late Bradford goals had condemned them to the fourth tier. News slowly crept across the Verlin Stand that we were occupying. The remaining passages of play are too much of a blur to recall beyond curling edge of the box efforts from Ronan Murray and Callum McGregor almost clinching victory.

The next thing I know, we’re on the pitch. Some look at pitch invasions in these situations as redundant, that you’re effectively celebrating a season of utter failure. If that’s your point of view, so be it. But given that defeat on March 15 at Tranmere felt like the game that had sealed our demotion, this was a day that felt like a promotion – that’s how big a deal staying up was to us. You only need have read this season’s Left Pie-On columns to know how desperate things have been at times.

pitch invasion

As the police and stewards asked those on the field to return to the stands so the players could come back out, it took your breath away to look back at our home for the afternoon and still see such massive numbers in support of the club. There was a sizeable crowd on the field, but those in the stands still singing about our wheelbarrow brought such a lump to the throat – one of so many sights and memories that we’ll be telling the grandchildren about for so many years to come: Derry fist pumping the sky from the tunnel; Sheehan on the supporters’ shoulders singing ‘we are staying up’; the pandemonium which greeted his penalty hitting the net. The celebrations continued long into the night, and onwards into the Meadow Club the next day for the season review afternoon.

An amazing weekend, some way to finish off what was at times a season that couldn’t reach its conclusion quickly enough. Were it up to supporters as a whole, we’d have thrown the towel in long ago. The pessimism and doubt appears never to have entered the collective mind of Abbott and Derry, however. The mentalists.

I haven’t even found time to discuss the three games which lead us down such a heart-stopping path to Boundary Park. How a best team performance in years at Bristol City yielded nothing but disappointment, with a pinch of pride. How a 1-0 victory over Crawley had people on edge for way too much of their Easter Monday afternoon. Or how the easiest task in football, stroking the ball into an empty net, became amongst the most epic of Meadow Lane memories en route to defeating Swindon Town in the last home game of the season.

And so here we are. The end of the season. I don’t even know how to sign off for the campaign in all honesty. On the surface, I should be fuming. Two months ago I’d have happily shown so much of our squad the door and been over the moon that I’d never see them again. But we ended the season in such good form, beating sides who themselves were looking imperious at the time. This was a run of results that offers us so much hope for a new campaign, helmed by a managerial duo who we appear to adore more and more each week, a pairing who are bringing the crowds back to Meadow Lane and giving us the very real sense that we should all be pulling together over the summer to get this club punching above its weight again.

Like Derry said post-match, “It’s not a badge, it’s a community”. Time to draw a line in the sand under all that has gone before and prepare for a new season together.

Notts County FC