What’s the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning?
Brentford Town’s football ground – that’s what!
If I strain my eyes North Westward, I can see the white arch of Wembley across the horizon.
On Sunday, 25,000 Brentford fans will make their way round the north circular and down Wembley Way, with them will be a couple of lads in green and white.
I slept in my Yeovil Town away kit last night and will wear my home kit today as I go about my business in Brentford High Street.
My father grew up here, my grandfather was Methodist Minister for the Hounslow and Brentford practice.
When I was a kid I supported Bournemouth, who pipped Brentford and Yeovil for automatic promotion. But a few years ago, Doncaster, the other promoted team from League One stole Bournemouth’s manager and most of its first team from Bournemouth.
Yeovil have never stolen players, we have never had the money. Our best player and the league’s top-scorer, Paddy Madden, arrived at the club mid-season on a free transfer.
Yeovil got to the final by beating Sheffield United over two legs. Sheffield United brought less fans to Huish Park on a sunny bank holiday Monday than Yeovil took to Sheffield for the first leg on a cold Friday night. Yeovil’s average home crowd is around 4,000 , about a quarter of #SUFC’s.
Yeovil Town is the best thing going for Yeovil which has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in the country. Our fans are impeccably behaved, we regularly win awards for our behaviour and Huish Park must be one of the safest grounds in the world. The relationship between the crowd, manager and players is close and while we do our fair share of moaning about the owners of the club, we are solvent and can afford to lose on Sunday.
8 minutes into the game, our fans will chant for 60 full seconds “there’s only one Adam Stansfield” in memory of our former player who died young and will not be forgotten.
Our motto is “Achieve by Unity” and it’s awesome how we have.
When Yeovil Town run out on the Wembley turf to fight for a place in the Championship, we will not be thinking about the £6m odd in extra TV revenues , or keeping Madden and Stech or dreaming of the Premiership. Our fans will be thinking about the lads and King Gary Johnson and glory for the Glovers.
We’ve come close before , this time we’re going all the way!
Football in Yeovil is played for the right reasons, for football reasons. As our club song goes we’ll be Yeovil True whether we’re up or down. But blimey, it would be great to get to the Championship for the first time in our club’s history!
Anyone who believes in community football should support us, Brentford is a great club, most seasons I look out for them, but not this system. If at 4pm on Sunday afternoon they have beaten us , I’ll share a drink with the Bees but let’s hope we’ll be spending Sunday night up town as the happiest of Brentford Glovers!
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- Up the football leagues we go! Come on #ytfc! (henrytapper.com)
- We are top of the league , we are top of the league! (henrytapper.com)
- We are the Yeovil! (henrytapper.com)
- We are Yeovil! (henrytapper.com)
- Yeovil Town 2-0 Sheffield United (Yeovil win 2-1 on agg) | League One play-off (guardian.co.uk)
- nPower Football League 1 Playoff Preview (tradersixtyfour.wordpress.com)
- Yeovil v Sheffield Utd (oddonion.com)
- Yeovil Town are preparing to face Brentford in the play-off final (dailymail.co.uk)
- League One Wrap: Brentford to meet Yeovil in play-off final (soccerway.com)
- Sheffield Utd v Yeovil (bbc.co.uk)
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