Reminiscing about The Owls (Sheffield Wednesday)

The past is always with us. Even though I’ve exceeded my allotted biblical span, it’s still quite easy for me to see in my mind’s eye a playback of Alan Finney making Roma’s international right back look clumsy, or Don Megson depositing both the ball and some nippy right winger along with it into the advertising hoardings. We were League runners-up behind a double winning Spurs team when achieving the double was something almost unheard of.

At the time I was a half-decent athlete myself. I was rowing at Henley before the end of the decade. Now I have arthritis in my wrists and a shoulder that constantly reminds me of all the falls I took when I changed sports and became a steeplechase amateur jockey.

My best Wednesday memories date back the best part of a lifetime. You have to be my age to remember it, and most people, fortunately for them, are not my age.

My own sporting career is similarly a thing of the past. But that doesn’t mean I can’t turn to something else. You work with what you have, you try coming at life from a different direction. I discovered I can write and people want to publish what I write. (Some of the time – you can’t win ‘em all.)

Like me, Wednesday are not what they were. But most of the things that matter are still here. The heart’s still beating; the supporters still believe; the team still matters because it’s a collective focus of potential achievement for a city population and diaspora that have had at least their fair share of hard knocks, if not more.

As I said, you work with what you have. You will find you still have a lot that’s worthwhile. Just don’t let the bastards grind you down.