These are the good old days

2020’s just around the corner. Maybe in a new division, heading for a new home. But don’t wish this bit away.

Can I shock you. This might be as good as being Luton (as you undilutedly are, mate) gets. As it ever, ever gets.

I don’t mean the league we’re in, the superstars in the squad or the gargantuan gates we might one day get in the Amazon European Super Champions Premier League.

Your favourite band, your best World Cup, the nights out that stay with you forever; most of that stuff is just about being young and pinning those flashes of light and love to some deeper moment of your awakening. But. Trust. Me. When. I. Say: when it comes to the football, this is the one, lads.

Flying like we are from where we’ve been is something most football clubs will never experience. Add to that a little dose of vintage Lutopian soap opera in the shape of a rurally-jacketed Welshman upping sticks and strutting wide-eyed towards the Potteries, screaming and pumping-chest in his bare feet like only a man who sleeps on a treadmill of mirrors can - and the stage is beautifully set for the Town to rampage towards our stated goal a year ahead of time, and in some style.

On the pitch, we’re treated to the joyfully loyal James Justin from Luton, Pelly blasting from the past and the future, the various sons of West Ham and loads and loads of blokes with beards and tattoos who I’d never heard of but might genuinely turn out to be the best football players in history.

And we get to enjoy it all from the questionable comfort of our beautiful home nearing its final chapter.

When you’re misty-eyed and recounting tales of Kenilworth Road to the great grandkids, they won’t believe you can feel the way you do about some old wood and concrete. About a corner or a step. A shin denting seat or a floodlit pillar.

And when all the clubs are owned by shadowy wealth funds for perpetually warring petro states, they won’t believe that this club was once run by some local people in love.

When all the managers are data scientists, with teeth whiter than emails, they won’t believe your stories of a folk hero named Harford who left us little love letters from other clubs he played for - like deliberate own goals or trampled-on, celebrating Hornets.

So yeah, 2020’s around the corner. And it might be tempting to start your report card for the current stewards of the club, with ticks pencilled in against the league we’re in and a new ground if they happen.

But maybe put away that list of things we said we’d do tomorrow.

Because when all’s said and done, whether you’re mind or body young; these are the good old days.

#TTAGU