My hangover has almost gone, the beer has definitely all gone and everything is alright in the world. I never thought I’d be saying it but Danny said it was going to the wire but FOUR minutes from the wire is cutting it fine
It was an emotional afternoon we had to win and hope other results went our way, all we could do is hope we could beat Tranmere. Danny stayed with the same starting line up as last week which we all thought was our strongest line up. The NHS was buzzing we played our part as Danny’s twelfth man, the interest was so great in MK that the away end was segregated and around 500 Mk’ers went were none had been before, it was great to see the passion and excitement in the home fans, just what the manager ordered.
The wind howled round the NHS and we attacked the away end first half, a great knockdown by Clive Platt was buried in the left hand bottom corner of the net by Gareth Edds after only 6 mins. Dons fans went wild , but surely it was too soon to celebrate? The news had just filtered through that Oldham were already in front, but when Windass equalised a few minutes later there was a massive cheer and it was game on again.
The second half had nearly everything, our game started the second half almost five minutes after the others due to several stoppages including a linesman needing running repairs to his flag after only a minute. The game was tense we knew Tranmere could equalise at anytime and on 65 minutes they did and we were back in trouble even when a streaker came on to the pitch from The Cowshed, the ball rattled our crossbar at the other end she was allowed to hold the game up for another couple of minutes.
With time running out but still nearly ten minutes left, news was filtering through that Oldham had won 2-1 but Torquay had gone down by the same score, we urged our boys onwards with a song “We only need one goal” it echoed round the ground just as the stadium announcer was telling us Gareth Edds was the man of the match, before he finished saying his name the same player drove the ball a fully twenty five yards into the top right corner of theTranmere goal to the uncontrolled delight of Milton Keynes Dons fans. We knew the rest of football was hanging on to faint hope of our demise but I am glad to report the premature news of our relegation was incorrect.
We were urged not to enter the pitch area, but who could blame us? On we went to acclaim our heroes and it took them nearly fifteen minutes to leave the pitch from all the elated supporters well wishes. Danny came in on December 9th we were second bottom, six points from safety with 22 games gone, he took us on an unbeaten run of 11 games collected 36 points in his 24 games with no money to spend on new players.
How he did it will remain in our hearts for ever and now we look forward to next season our second in Coca Cola League One. The rebuilding starts today there are those that will leave and we’ll be sorry to see them go, but we wish them well and we’ll welcome the new faces to join us and give them the backing they need.
Roll on the preseason ….not long now !