This weekend saw the Daggers wave goodbye to the football league, with a hard fought battling, performance that unfortunately saw them lose 2-1 to Bristol Rovers.
Although relegation had been confirmed for the last few weeks, performances in the last three games of the season have probably been some of the best we have seen this year. A pretty young team has been entrusted by John Still to finish this season and to be fair the players who have been given the nod have done nothing to harm their chances of regular football, either at conference level with us next year or higher up in the leagues with someone else.
For me the end of this awful season couldn’t have come soon enough. It really has been a year where the Daggers fans have not had anything to celebrate. Hopefully as sad as it is falling out of the league, next season will see us compete better and try and bounce back at the first time of asking. Obviously it will be hard and a lot of changes will have to be made, but if we get recruitment right and bring in some hungry players coupled with the signings that John has already made, there is no reason why we can’t put up some kind of challenge. People will point at the fact that there are a lot of “big teams” in the national league, I would point out that there are a lot of big teams in league two that we have finished above in the past. Leicester have shown this season, just as we have in seasons past that it is not always about money. You need to build a team that has a work ethic, team spirit and a desire to fight for the shirt they are wearing, add a little bit of quality and you have the main ingredients for success. I am looking forward to next season and I already can’t wait to get it started.
I have many good memories of our team in the league, staying up the first season was amazing, playing in the League cup for the first time was incredible and of course playing in the third tier of English football and competing with the likes of Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, Huddersfield and Brighton was a thrill.
My favourite time in the league though has to be the two seasons leading up to our big day out at Wembley and the play off final. The 2008/09 and 2009/10 seasons were brilliant, we played without doubt our best football over those two campaigns as well as having some of the best players this club has ever had. During those seasons we scored plenty of goals and we had the pleasure of watching the likes of Matt Ritchie, Sam Saunders and Danny Green tear teams apart. In the 2008/09 season we were unlucky not to reach the play offs, finishing 8th, we then went on to lose some of our most effective players. Most clubs would have wavered but we somehow got stronger despite the loss of Saunders, Ritchie, Foster and Strevens. In came the likes of Danny Green, Josh Scott and Stuart Thurgood, and we went on to have a great season culminating in a day out at Wembley and promotion to League 1. I still believe that if Thurgood had not got injured that season we wouldn’t have had that Wembley final, as we would have gone up automatically, that was how good he was for us.
After narrow relegation from League 1, there weren’t much to get excited about, until Wayne Burnett surprised everyone with his swoop for Zavon Hines and Rhys Murphy. I believe we finished 9th that season and I have no doubt if those two players hadn’t got injured then another play off final could have been on the cards. After that though we began to spiral a bit and over the last few seasons it has been pretty hard going being a Daggers fan. The way things were going sooner or later it was all going to catch up with us and eventually this season was the season our luck ran out.
Hopefully next season will see the start of a new era.
I have decided to pick my League football Daggers 11 based on the best players I have seen for us over the last 9 years.
Cockney Byrites Daggers League 11:
Substitutes:
David Button, Mattieu Baudry, Anwar Uddin, Billy Bingham, Rhys Murphy, Zavon Hines, Dwight Gayle.
Enjoy the close season and the Euro’s and see you all next season, which will hopefully be much more fun!!
Up the Daggers!!
If you enjoy my posts, please keep an eye out for my European Championship Blog which I will be writing during the tournament.
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