It’s the End of the World As We Know It

[Bournemouth Blue]

I was a ball boy for a season at Gigg Lane when I was about 10. My main memory is of the tracksuit they provided stinking of horse shit for some reason.
Oh, and giggling constantly whenever the name Neville Neville came up! Always had him down as a wrong’un.. :-)

My commisserations!

 

[Oystercatcher28]

I

Stevie Gerard, are you listening?

I still love making his autobiography slip on book and charity shops.

 

[SamTheGuru]

For me nothing topped the Aguero moment and I'd say that goes for almost all long suffering Blues. Those were the days before ffp 115 charges and I'd say tourists. Every clubs fans worldwide except the rags celebrated that one with us. We were still little old City back then fighting against Ferguson and his evil red army empire.

If one game encapsulated what it meant to be a City fan it was this one. Second best to the rags for decades and now finally able to compete financially and on the field. After murdering them at Old Trafford, leading the table for months, then looking like we had blown it, we had miraculously clawed our way back. Now just one game stood between us and our first title for 44 years. The hard work had been done. The club with the best home record in the league against the club with the worst away record. What could possibly go wrong? As we now know plenty.

A horrible stuttering painful ninety minutes followed. World class players like Aguero, Tevez and Silva played like they had lead in their boots. Our often saviour Toure had departed injured. Leading 1-0 our normally rock solid defender Lescott haplessly miscued a simple header, a mistake on a par with classic cock ups from a painful past littered with such cock ups and it was 1-1. Then our ex thug Joey Barton was sent off. Q.P.R down to ten men. This was it, now we could finally put them to the sword. Then disaster struck. Our captain, our reliable leader Vincent Kompany, got rinsed in a rare QPR breakaway. The cross came in and a bizarre header bounced high off the floor and almost comically ended up in our net. 1-2. The pain was too much to bear. It was too cruel. Hadn't we suffered enough? The old ghosts of Maine Road swirled in the air mocking us. The gypsy curse, Jamie Pollock's own goal, keeping the ball in the corner thinking we needed a draw, when only a win would do to avoid relegation, David Pleat dancing across our hollowed turf in his white shoes. Just when we thoughts we'd exorcised them all they had returned.

As we sat slumped in our seats, the pain too much to bear, a higher power took pity on us. Dzeko, then Aguero scored and the gutteral primaeval roar that followed blew the ghosts away. It was a noise so loud, such a release of pain and misery, that shocked shoppers in Asda stood open mouthed and wondered what the hell had happened. The ending of our years of pain is what. A moment never to be forgotten or repeated. To quote Peter Drury, "From the depths of despair to cacophonic joy!" It sure was.

I felt euphoria in it's most extreme after the Aguero moment. I was walking around in a haze for 24 hours before it started to wear off. I don't think anything is ever going to top that. It is impossible. As you have said, that moment encapsulated absolutely every feeling we have ever had as a city fan, all the frustration, all the despair, the division 2 rebound, the narrowly avoiding going into administration, a cherry on top being "not in my lifetime", absolutely everything into one brief millisecond. Pure ecstasy. There is no scenario I can see where that is ever achievable again.