Transformed

If Doncaster Rovers win at Cheltenham on Saturday they’ll be promoted to the second tier of English football, ten years after losing their league place in 1998. Chairman John Ryan will have delivered everything he promised when he bought the wretched remains of the club that summer, with the team playing in a new stadium and at a height not seen since Alick Jeffrey’s first spell in the side fifty years ago.

Although I attended games sporadically during those first two seasons in the Conference, relegation was essentially the end of my time as a supporter. My heart was no longer in it. I simply couldn’t summon the renewed commitment, having gone through the protracted death rattle at the end of the arsonist and fraudster Ken Richardson’s tenure as the soi-disant benefactor of the club. Later on, promotion would’ve been difficult to take in its own way, had I been there to witness it. Actually winning something seemed precisely anathema to the whole reason for supporting Doncaster Rovers in the first place. There are three constants in my life: Philip Larkin, Depeche Mode and socialism. A declaration of love for any of them is unlikely to get one laid. “Deprivation is for me what daffodils were to Wordsworth,” said Larkin, who, when he wasn’t humping Betty Mackereth behind the accessions desk occasionally wrote some astonishingly good poems. I don’t listen to Depeche Mode because I think life is a joyous celebration. No, I listen to Depeche Mode because they offer pain and misery in various tempos. When asked what goes through his mind onstage, guitarist Martin Gore responded that he thinks about death and how curious it would be if he expired in front of 50,000 people. Nor do I need to explain here why identifying as a socialist, as I do now, as I did at the last election and as I have done for as long as I knew the world was hugely unjust, does not cheer the soul. If I had wanted success I could have turned to Manchester United. I grew up in Stretford and, unlike the majority of United fans, I’ve actually been to a game. No, keep it miserable and I’m happy.

So, a return to the league in 2003 via a golden goal in the inaugral Conference play-off final was followed by the Division 3 title the next year. Victories over Manchester City, Aston Villa and so nearly against Arsenal in the Carling Cup were an adequate substitute for promotion the season after* and when the subsequent campaign again stalled short of the play-offs, victory in the Johnstones Paint Trophy in front of 60,000 at the Millennium Stadium sufficed. It made me sick.

Ultimately though, it isn’t the success, astonishing and unexpected as it has been which repels me. I may even have returned after a hiatus. No, it’s the fans. More precisely, the new fans, who have emerged in their thousands over the past five years. Families. Children with painted faces. Those for whom football is a leisure choice enjoyed à la carte in the sterilised environment only a £32m all-seater stadium provides. And it’s arse-clenchingly awful.

I still watch from afar. No doubt capricious fortune will likely conspire to deliver a victory for Sean O’Driscoll’s side, but then snatch it away from them, when Leeds United are given just enough points back via arbitration to send Donny tumbling into the play-offs. That would almost be enough to call me back, just so long as it precipitated an immediate relegation and the start of another generation in the doldrums. When those painted faces are being ground in the Doncaster dirt by a group of Chelsea fans at school my heart will sing and when that club-affiliated visa card is being hacked across despairing wrists will I truly belong again. Until that day I remain an exile.

Still, the possibility of Doncaster winning promotion and leaving Leeds United behind them remains. Even I can see that is remarkable. If one could go back in time and tell both clubs their respective fates on this cup night just over seven years ago who would have laughed hardest in sheer incomprehension?

*As Nick points out here, I’ve omitted a season. Apologies for this oversight.