Week 10: Play-Offs? Stranger Things Have Happened
Eleven.
The name of the mysterious girl with the buzz-cut hair and superpowers in the 80s-set Netflix phenomenon, Stranger Things (whose fourth season begins later this year).
Perhaps more significantly for this column, it’s also the number of League Two points that lie between my team and Northampton Town, the team that currently occupy that most coveted of things for lower league fans: the final play-off place.
With ten games to go (one more than Northampton – who we’ve inexplicably done the double over – and most other teams) it looks like a long shot at best. But it’s not over until the ‘fat lady’ (is there anything politically correct with that expression?) sings or in the TV show, Eleven gets a nosebleed, so while we’re in mathematically possible territory, let’s not rule anything out.
Because, theoretically win the game in hand (Stevenage, away) and we’re in the nosebleed zone ourselves, for this season anyway; the top half – joint tenth if it were played and won tomorrow but it’s scheduled for the final day of the month instead – and within striking distance.
To be fair, just being able to see the dotted play-off line, let alone get above it, is a bonus. A first season in League Two for more than a decade has been inconsistent to say the least, but at the moment things are looking decidedly up after wins against more genuine promotion contenders, Exeter City, and the previously-mentioned Cobblers, as well as a draw with Port Vale that was a win in all but name.
We had been warned, by fans of the club where our manager had previously worked wonders, that he was a notorious slow starter. I think we just all assumed that it wouldn’t take as late as mid-February to get going. But better that than not happening altogether, and all that.
The advantage of sneaking into that final top-seven berth – and I still think the odds are massive and don’t expect it to happen – is that it would make us the most dangerous thing in football since the play-offs were introduced in 1986/7; the in-form side with absolutely nothing to lose.
Full disclosure: I am a massive fan of the play-offs. The concept anyway, if less so the format (but more about that later), and let’s face it, if they didn’t exist then any lingering dreams of promotion would be long gone and the club (and this column) would be treading water waiting for next season instead.
That we aren’t is because of the change that breathed new life into many a football season. At the time, it wasn’t immediately welcomed or praised – I recall a lot of people who said it wasn’t needed – but a lot of changes in football need time. Three points for a win wasn’t an overnight winner, and I was listening to an audiobook this morning that described the evolution of the offside law and told of a 1906 Scotland v England international where, with a man injured, the English captain pushed his team up (there had to be three players between the attacker and the goal in those days) and caught the Scots offside time and time again less than twenty yards from their own penalty area (no ‘inside your own half’ rule yet either). Try understanding that one, girls.
Anyway, the point is that the play-offs were initially seen as yet another unnecessary change. ‘Why play 42 games – as it was then – only for it all to boil down to an extra game?’ and ‘it’s completely unfair on the team that finishes third*.’ Both were true, of course, but that wasn’t the point. It also kept the season at boiling point for far longer, eliminating dead rubbers; increasing attendances and gate receipts and most of all, our interest levels. Those benefits outweighed the feelings of unfairness that three clubs felt each season, and they knew the rules before they kicked a ball anyway.
Compared to a lot of fans who support clubs that seem to get into them every other season, I have just four personal experiences of the play-offs.
Walking It (D3, 1988)
In over a 130 years, my club has one solitary trip to Wembley to its name (see last week’s column about the EFL Trophy) but with better timing, it could have been three. Typically, the timing was out when we reached the final of the play-offs a couple of years before it became a showpiece Wembley final in 1990.
In 1988, the sophomore year of the play-offs where a team from the division above was one of the four involved, we were that team that the play-offs were specifically designed to hurt. We’d finished third, and two years earlier would have gone up automatically, but instead had to battle our way through FIVE more games.
First up, fourth-placed Notts County away, who took the lead within a minute, where we won 3-1 and then drew the return leg in midweek. The final – also two legs – was against Bristol City who had condemned Sheffield United to relegation. All the new misgivings came out about us finishing seven points above them but it hardly seemed to matter after a 3-1 win at Ashton Gate. The second leg on Saturday 28 May was one of the weirdest games I’ve been to. We lost 2-0 but with no ‘away goals rule’ the game went to a penalty shoot-out, not to decide the winner, but for home ‘advantage’ in a third game to be played on the Monday, which we duly won. I those days, I walked the three and a half miles to home matches (I was 16) and the same back again. I did it on that Saturday, then the Sunday to queue for a ticket and again on the Monday. That Bank Holiday cost me two lots of ticket money and my parents the price of new soles on my shoes. Not that I cared. In the first fifteen minutes of the decider, we’d scored three and the post-game party and pitch invasion was ready and waiting long before the referee sent off Carl Shutt and blew for full-time at 4-0.
All Change (D4, 1993)
Five years later, we’d made it from D2 to D4 and got another taste of the play-offs after finishing fifth. By now, and probably after the three-game farce in ‘88, the final was established at Wembley, and we and Crewe were in the ‘middle-ground’ semi-final. Neither had finished fourth and felt aggrieved (that feeling took a long time to wear off in the early days) and nor had we arrived late without a care in the world.
This time, we scored early. Then Crewe scored five without reply. In the return, we scored first again but lost 4-2 and 9-3 on aggregate (still probably one of the biggest beatings in play-off history) and forgot about promotion for a couple of years.
Carry On Behind (D3, 2001)
It was almost a decade later and, as Wembley was in the throes of demolition, the extended season with play-offs came calling again. Again, we’d neither lost out nor snuck in, but after relegation from the second tier, we’d held a place in the top six for most of the season and eventually finished fourth. Stoke were beaten in a tense semi-final that exploded into life either side of half-time in the second leg at home when we scored four times between minutes 42 and 61.
* or equivalent position that would have gained automatic promotion previously
The final, in Cardiff, was another strange one. There was a sickly, too-much-at-stake-ness to it all for me on a soaking wet Sunday in the Welsh capital. Reading had finished five points ahead in third and led the game with a first-half goal only for a Don Goodman equaliser just after half-time to take the game into extra time. Again, Reading struck first – just a minute in – and led after that until the 108th minute when a freak own-goal levelled things again and sixty-seconds after that, we got what proved to be the winner. The euphoric celebrations were fantastic but it hadn’t been that enjoyable to watch – even the last eleven (there we go again) minutes were torturous, but they were also the only time we been in front in the whole 120.
Kick ‘Em While They’re Down (D3, 2016)
Having been in just three play-off campaigns and won two, I’d never had beef with the play-off format until now when we got there for the first time in what felt like forever. This time we were back to having everything to lose, having been in the automatic race right up until the last minute of the last day of the regular season. Deflated, having won 5-0 at Vale Park and still not made it, we learned that we’d be playing Barnsley who had come from the bottom four in November and secured sixth with a 4-1 victory at champions, Wigan, in their last game.
That result, plus the fact we’d finished a massive 10 points ahead of them, scored more and conceded fewer, should have given us lots to worry about. The care-free Tykes, literally on a roll, smashed us at Oakwell – winning 3-0 – and then racing into a lead by the same score-line in the second leg before we got a late consolation (if that’s what it was) and went on to thump Millwall at Wembley too.
I’d not realised that the format actually gave a not-so-slight advantage in that very scenario. The late-arrivals, happy to be there and on a charge, get a free hit – at home in front of a full house – against the team who’ve been up there all season and are psychologically vulnerable after missing by a whisker less than a week earlier. I know it’s rare that it falls exactly like that but when it does, it feels like everything is in their favour.
It’s why I applaud the changes the National League have made to their play-off format – and similar to the MLS – where the team finishing higher gets every advantage possible (at home in a one-off game, less rounds, opposition play barefooted) to make it to the final.
Of course, if we somehow sneak in ourselves with a final day win to clinch seventh place, then whack the team who came a faraway fourth, eleven points better off, in the semi-finals, I’ll not care one iota.
Cause I’ll be on my way to Wembley for a play-off final at last. Nosebleed or not.
They can always make it fairer next season.
Next Time: Every Game’s A Cup Final
words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist