As we recover our senses after the highs and lows of the 2024-5 season, I wanted simply to say, “Thank you and take pride, Wycombe Wanderers”.
I left Charlton’s stadium on Thursday night – I hope along with many others, in spirit if not just those in person - with more pride than disappointment.
To experience a 1,600 or so Wycombe contingent encouraging their players to the last whistle, to a man giving their all, against larger numbers and greater forces at work, was as uplifting to me as many an experience of supporting Wycombe over nigh on sixty years.
As we lick our wounds and quickly forget the immediate preoccupations of lobbed flares, overrun stewards, questionable tackles, season-long shirt-grabs, professional fouls, imperfect officialdom and imbecilic non-fan gatecrashers of big occasions (to which Wycombe have fallen victim in the past) wearing whosoever’s colours just for the night (and for the laugh) let us celebrate this. We move on with heart and pride.
Signing up for the ride each August is a commitment of faith and if there were guaranteed instant gratification it would not be worth the seasonal financial investment of barely three visits to a Premier League stadium, where the dissatisfaction ratings reach record levels each year at all but one club, such is the precious, spoiled and fickle nature of “support” in the higher leagues.
It has for sure been a season of mischances and missed chances, but let us reflect on the positives.
I wrote to Gareth Ainsworth some seasons back on the Monday after the home defeat to Bristol Rovers when he was booed along with the players as our departure from the Football League appeared inevitable the following weekend, but for miracles the following Saturday at Torquay and Bristol Rovers. The tone of my letter was to the effect that Gareth’s abilities deserved to be judged by a Wycombe team in his own image, made up of players he had recruited, embodying the virtues and spirit he brought to the club, running through walls, giving their best, personifying Keith Ryan, not those of some of the lily-livered journeymen he had haplessly inherited.
Not only did the gods smile kindly on us all the following weekend, but to his huge credit Gareth wrote back to me saying how much he had appreciated my support. What he and his players then went on to recruit achieved now represents the very much higher bar against which all their successors are judged.
Let this be a carrot not a stick for those successors. Let us still celebrate what Gareth, then Matt Bloomfield, went to achieve with those they attracted to play in Wycombe’s colours, but let Mike Dodds and those to be trying their hardest in 2025/6 to bring success to the club to be supported and celebrated by us all with equal determination.
The 2024/5 season has witnessed a new crop of talented players doing their utmost. We have witnessed a rich seam of talented and motivated players this season in Wycombe shirts who merit praise alongside many heroes of yesteryear.
Even if we do not see them again, but in many cases I sincerely hope we do, the likes of Richard Kone, Josh Scowen, Cam Humphreys, Joe Low, Jack Grimmer, Caleb Taylor, Dan Harvie, Dan Udoh, Garath McCleary, Sonny Bradley, Luke Leahy, Fred Onyedinma, Sam Vokes and so many more deserve every plaudit of continuing a fine tradition of how to play for this club.
If some pursue their fortunes elsewhere let us still celebrate next season the part they have played in enriching the experience of our being Wycombe Wanderers fans. It is this shared experience which holds Wycombe in an admired place from many quarters in the game in whichever division of the league we presently find ourselves.
That is a place of pride. To nearly achieve Championship ranking for a second time in five years for a club whose years have primarily been non-league and still attracting no more than 4,500 for home games and not cheating on financial rules, is something worthy of celebration, however much we aspire still to improve upon this.