Harrogate Town opinion: Encouraging signs during Sulphurites' last game of the season

Two teams sharing 105 continuous years in the Football League, a sell-out crowd presumably upwards of 4,000 and none of the stress of a relegation six-pointer, although I’m sure our visitors would have welcomed the chance of the latter.

I was looking forward to Harrogate Town’s Bank Holiday Monday’s clash with Rochdale immensely.

Dale were finally on their way out of the League after more than a century of continuous service, mostly in the fourth tier with three short forays into the tier above.

There’s been no brief sojurn to the top-flight like Carlisle, or anything half approaching the amazing rise, fall and partial rise again of AFC Wimbledon. It’s just been steady away, helped by the fact that many of those years didn’t even have automatic relegation from the Football League.

I’m not sure whether that’s a heck of an achievement or something that’s been quite boring to watch over the intervening period, but they’re going to find it hard to come back from the National League, a division of fallen ‘giants’ all vying for one automatic promotion place and trying to avoid the bottom four - just ask York City.

And this is why it was vital Town stayed up in a league where, all things being even, you have a better chance of going up than down.

All things not being even, of course, we’re at Wetherby Road today to celebrate a fourth consecutive year in the Football League. If Town manage another 98, I’ll be well-chuffed. Actually I’ll be pushing up daisies, but you get my point.

I conspired to miss all of the pre-match entertainment, but I was reliably informed that Luke Armstrong deservedly scooped the player of the year awards and, when the match eventually spluttered into life following a minute’s silence, the national anthem and the players taking the knee, it seemed to be suffering from fatigue.

The pace of the first half resembled a warm-up to a pre-season friendly, Rochdale only briefly puncturing the tedium to put the ball in Mark Oxley’s net.

I’d come with the attitude that I was going to enjoy the match, come what may, but Simon Weaver’s players were making it very hard for me to do so.

As two smoke bombs, a blue one from the Rochdale end and a yellow one from the Kop in an approximation of the Ukrainian flag, burned themselves out slowly on the pitch (the man with the bucket of sand must have been laid off due to a recent scarcity of work), I began to wonder whether this display of pyrotechnics would be the most excitement we could hope for in the second period, and whether Town were going to let down a big crowd once again.

I needn’t have worried, as the players came out and delivered a much better showing after the interval, snatching an equaliser 16 minutes from time to send the fans home relatively happy.

I initially thought Kazeem Olaigbe had over-hit his cross after Jack Muldoon had just failed to latch onto Armstrong’s headed through-ball, but failed to see the popular Toby Sims steaming in at the back post to smash the ball past visiting keeper Richard O’Donnell.

The attendance figure for the game was announced as 3,234, yet Town’s stated capacity is 5,000. It was a good crowd but, even allowing for a rough 400 lost to the ‘no-man’s land’ between fans and the near closure of the 1919 end, where were the remaining 1,300 or so?

There was room to swing the proverbial cat around us in the Wetherby Road Stand and the Kop didn’t look over-stretched either. I’ve seen them both much, much fuller.

How on earth did we manage to get 3,000 in for the York match back in the old National League North days when we had far less infrastructure?

In light of the fact that a lot of fans who wanted to get tickets couldn’t, some sort of explanation and/or review of the attendance arrangements would be very welcome.

Back to the game, and I think that the result was a fair one and even the visiting fans seemed happy enough with a point, staying to clap their already-relegated team at the end, as did we.

A majority of three sides of the ground, seasoned fans and new families alike, hung back behind the advertising hoardings to applaud the players and staff as they walked round the ground with their children in tow.

It was warm applause well-earned as everyone involved can be proud of what they’ve achieved since January. There were the obligatory ‘(insert name) give me your shirt’ placards, with Armstrong obliging one such young fan right in front of us.

I say ‘obligatory’, but this is a relatively new thing at Town and encouraging signs of how the fan-base has grown.

It’s now important the club learns from the big miscalculation at the start of this season, builds on the great relationship the players have with the young fans, and revises season ticket prices to encourage these youngsters and their parents to commit full-time. They are, after all, the future of the club in this town.

See you next year Town fans. Same time, same place.