DEAR Uncle Jack,
Please excuse me for addressing you in such familiar terms. It's just that we've been through a shared experience recently, a family bereavement if you like, as Rovers Premiership dream died.
We all felt the pain, but probably no-one as much as you. I suppose with hindsight it wasn't a sudden death but none of us, yourself included, realised just how ill the team was.
It can't help your grief to hear outsiders feeling vindicated, saying that your financial backing couldn't buy long-term success for Rovers, though we won't forget the Premiership title and two UEFA Cup places. (We can easily brush off the jibes from the claret and blue paupers, who seem to think that 15th place in Division Two is a great achievement.)
As in your successful business life, you'll know that setbacks occur when you least expect them. But it must be galling that the trust and belief you placed in certain individuals since those glorious, heady days of 1995 have been so badly repaid. Can you forgive them? We supporters find it hard to do so.
It's not that we had delusions of grandeur. We never expected Rovers to rule the roost year in, year out. In Italian terms, we are a Parma not a Juventus, but it's ironic that on the night our hopes were interred, Parma won the UEFA Cup, just eight years after they, too, reached the big time. But when we've all wiped away the tears of this season, we have to bounce back, there's no other way. It would be nice to bottle some of the spirit that coursed through the veins of true Blue and Whites during the final rites last Wednesday.
As we applauded you, projected large on the giant screen, I hope you could feel the warmth and affection for all you've done to elevate Rovers. Even the hardened hacks, and Alex Ferguson himself, were forced to admit 'this is a Premiership club'.
We have to remember that fact, because there will doubtless be clouds and storms while the foundations are being rebuilt. Let's hope that those supporters who stayed long after the end can carry that commitment to the cause, to your cause, into the battles ahead.
In time, we'll think of last Wednesday's event not as a funeral, but as a rebirth. For now, Uncle Jack, take a well-earned break (goodness knows, you must need one). And this column will do the same.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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