SouthWestOwl

First of all, well done to the two fellas. I hope it doesn''t go as far as criminal proceedings as lives can change for the worse for those two gentlemen. Secondly, don''t underestimate the power that you have over the Club. As an example at Wednesday; Wednesday fans had to have a Criminal Record check to be able to attend away games and we also had to pay for the priviledge. Within 4 weeks the Club had reversed the policy as fans boycotted away games leading to home clubs disregarding the policy as they were losing tens of thousands of pounds in revenue. Eventually, Wednesday refunded the fans who had their check and the Club lost a small fortune on administration of the scheme. We knew then that us fans didn''t have to take what was thrown at us and walking away in the short-term benefitted us all in the long-term. If you don''t like what happened to these two men (and Delia/Gunn etc), are you prepared to make NCFC suffer financially? That''s tricky, but ultimately a little pain now saves more in the future, or at least that''s the potential.

When we (The Wednesday) were down in L1, we spent the first season avoiding relegation to L2 and then completely rehashing the team the following summer. All things said, we went into the second season thinking we''d do well and be on of the faves to go up and we played Colchester at home on the first game; they thrashed us 3-0 in front of a stunned Hillsborough 25k crowd. It was the last time they''ve won away on the opening game of the season; we went on to a) sack the useless manager(an ex-Wednesday goalkeeper) a while later and then b) go on to get promoted via the play-offs with our new manager. Ok, 3-0 is nowhere near as bad as 7-1 but the same lesson was learnt; you have to scrape for every point against teams used to doing scraping to survive. We became better fans for spending a few years in L1, the fun of football returned after years being also-rans in the Division 1(now the CCC) and we re-discovered old proper English grounds and had lots of fun and banter with the oppos, eventually waving two fingers at them on our way out of there having a much greater respect for the game as a whole. Anyway, good luck. The smart money still says you''ll be in the play-offs regardless of what happened yesterday as other Clubs simply don''t have the means to fully compete against a team drawing 25k+ every other week. Some survive on 3k gates, that''s impressive and admirable, but won''t pay for owt when the time is needed. PS - Grant Holt used to be an Owl too; a tryer and a grafter but L1 was a division too far for him.

[quote user="CT "][quote user="jas the barclay king"] if we go down we have a huge clear out, back room staff, board, coaches, players, non playing/office staff the lot.. we then roll our sleeves up and start again. jas :) [/quote] Bring it on [Y] [/quote] Hi, Wednesday fan here with experience of the "dreaded" League 1. Clearing the dead-wood at Wednesday happened when we went down from 2nd to 3rd tier.  The entire culture of SWFC went from wastage to thrifty, we had to, but it was completely refreshing as well and I''m sure most Wednesdayite get quite a nostalgic feeling from it all, even if we were down there longer than we wanted.  It was a relief to go down, we''d been hovering in the lower second-tier and apathy had a stronghold on the club but we needed to go down to just start from a blank canvas again.  We got rid of journeymen players and looked to PL youth players and the lower leagues for hungry players and our own academy stepped up to the plate for our starting XI.  Our wage budget was something like £2M, completely unheard of in the CCC these days but we were still the highest payers by a distance.  When we went down, average gates went up about 4000 IIRC, not bad at all.  League 1 is great, I won''t hear a bad word about it.  Obviously a big club doesn''t want to stay there too long or your chances of getting back and staying back are harmed IMO, but I gaurantee(sp) you''d enjoy it.  New grounds, new ale, sell out crowds close to the pitch, I think it''s genuinely an experience. I don''t think you''ll go down anyway, but judging by what I read on here, I almost feel as if you need it, just to start again and enjoy your football once more before having another crack at the CCC but on your terms. Good luck anyway.   UTO!