When the Football League season begins in early-August the finish line seems ridiculously far away. Lying between August and May is a forty six match season – a campaign so long that large chunks of it end up being rendered irrelevant. In the Premier League, three of four games without a win is enough to have everyone hitting the panic button. In the Football League, a club might go ten games without a win before discovering some form, and find they’ve still got plenty of time to move up the league, because the teams around them are all so inconsistent.
It is a farcical existence, because you can’t really tell how good your team is until mid-March when there’s only six weeks to go. And, if after all that slog, all that up and down, you find yourself in a win or bust decider – well, that’s what makes it all worthwhile, right? People will forever talk about Sergio Aguero’s goal against QPR as the most dramatic finish to a season ever, but I think Brentford v Doncaster Rovers last Saturday beat it. Victory for Brentford would see them promoted to the Championship at Doncaster’s expense; if Doncaster avoided defeat, they would go up, while victory would land them the League One title, too.
After ninety four goalless minutes, Brentford were awarded a penalty and the opportunity to claim promotion with one well placed strike of the ball. The penalty was at the home end, with Brentford supporters packed onto their terrace, ready to unleash ecstasy. It was all set up to be one of those moments that immediately pass into legend; cementing the bond between club and fan for generations, and reaffirming to those present why they chose to support Brentford and not Chelsea or QPR. They would be able to say, ‘it doesn’t matter if we’re shit for another ten years, because I’ll always have this day, and it was ace. Chelsea can win the Champions League, but they won’t ever know what it felt like to be at Griffin Park when the Bees went up with the last kick of the season.’
As everyone has since seen, what followed will indeed go down in Brentford’s history, but not as the euphoric moment Bees fans craved. Instead, they were subjected to a twist so cruel it’d turn the stomach of the most brutal medieval dungeon master. Not only did Marcello Trotta’s penalty smack off the crossbar, but Brentford fans had to watch in stunned horror as Doncaster raced away to tap in the winner. The Doncaster goal didn’t really matter to Brentford in the sense that a draw would have taken Rovers up anyway. It was simply the final insult. After all that slog, Brentford must have felt like a salmon that made it a thousand miles up-stream only to get plucked out of the water and devoured by a grizzly bear when the end was in sight.
In this zero sum game Brentford’s misery was Doncaster’s joy. They had the reverse roller coaster having been seconds away from promotion, desperate for the game to end, and then seeing the referee point to the spot, followed by a sickening roar of excited anticipation from the Brentford fans. Seconds later, the Doncaster fans were leaping on top of each other and mobbing the scorer of the winning goal.
A few days later, I sent a message to a friend who supports Brentford to check he hadn’t lost it completely. He replied, “I’d still be struggling to comprehend it if it weren’t for the fact it so perfectly encapsulated the experience of being a Brentford fan.” I’m sure there are fans of other less celebrated clubs that would empathise with that sentiment. The problem for clubs that don’t compete for titles very often is that you never know when you’re going to get a shot at glory like that again. And, that’s the tragic thing for Brentford. They might yet go up through the playoffs, but what a moment they would have had, in front of their fans, with the last kick of the season. Trotta would have been held aloft in the inevitable pitch invasion, instead of trudging off in shame. Fans of smaller clubs generally adopt a more stoic approach to such setbacks, but everyone needs a break occasionally. Griffin Park only has a few years left on this Earth. As one of the more enjoyable London grounds to visit, I hope it yet has something to celebrate before the gates are locked for good.
P.S. If any Brentford fans are reading this, read this about the play-offs – hopefully it’ll cheer you up.
And read this, written by said mate, for further insight into the mindset of a Bees supporter.
