When Relegation Reared Its Ugly Head

This following article was printed in the Cray Wanderers matchday programme on Saturday 8 March 2014, for the game against Lowestoft Town in the Ryman Isthmian League Premier Division, played at Hayes Lane, Bromley. 

While it is only the eve of the 2025-26 season as I reproduce this item, and no clubs to my knowledge have ever faced relegation so early in a season, I would suggest you read it with a hint of caution about what happens when a big bubble bursts at a football club when you least expect it to. It might read like a horror story but it really happened on the Wands' own doorstep. 

The article starts when Cray were all but relegated from the Ryman League Premier Division after five seasons, soon to be finishing bottom of the table, 23 points from 'safety'.

I guess it is no longer a big secret, or a hope against hope that, Cray won't avoid the drop at the end of the current season. It is now long past the time when mentioning relegation should be considered a taboo topic within or outside of the club. The real annoyance comes from the fact that this situation was allegedly predetermined as long ago as the latter part of last season, when the financing for the Cray first team was withdrawn and we nearly came a cropper as the season drew to a close.

However, much to the credit of a long-serving manager at the time and his more-than-worthy management team, enough expertise was shown to keep the team away from the bottom four of the Ryman Premier League in the face of adversity. But, as we look back, was the club just putting off the inevitable? Well, I do believe it was, as had Cray gone down a level for this season, maybe our stalwart supporters wouldn't have been subjected to such humiliating defeats, the sacking of a perfectly good and proven manager at this level and the swing-doors approach of so many players coming and going this term. By the way, I don't blame any of the very many players (nor the former favourites who left the club early doors) for what's misfiring at the club.

Okay, you're probably asking "who are you to comment about this club when you don't even attend games?" and I don't blame you for raising that point. For the uninitiated among you, I have been a loyal supporter of Cray Wanderers since the 1960s, I signed for the club as a player in 1972, I served on the Cray committee in the 1970s, I was the programme editor and producer for most of the same decade (and won a Best Programme award for the club for my efforts!), I ran the official website for 9 years between 2003 and 2012 and until right now I have been a regular article writer, graphics designer and a member of the editorial team for the matchday programmes for a few years. Oh, and I created the club's 100 Club and administered it for four years when none of the Cray committee wanted to know after the Chairman originally raised the subject. In 2012, I had to stop being involved in the website and the 100 Club for personal reasons unrelated to the club.

I believe that this involvement is plenty enough to warrant me giving this feedback within the pages of the matchday programme and from my 'solitary confinement' on the South Kent Coast, especially as I have been banned by the club for the past two seasons from airing my valid views as a supporter on the so-called 'supporters forum' attached to the main website. How did I get banned? Well, perhaps that's another story for another time, but one that has never been properly explained to me either!

I am almost certain that, given a decent budget for the first team, Jenko, Joe and Blado would have turned this season around. Indeed, had a budget been in place from day one, none of the cricket-score heavy defeats would have happened and our supporters would not have paid hard-earned money to witness such humiliating and humbling defeats since August 2013. Dare we read into all of this that the club maybe couldn't care less about its supporters who turn up week after week, or the loyal persons who have willingly served this club well during the past ten, twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty years? Or maybe the club has drifted too far away from its roots that only a return to somewhere like Sandy Lane could or would put things right? Who can tell for sure? 

I've planned to give up writing articles for the programmes at the end of this season; in fact, I had prepared myself to give up writing in these programmes at the end of last season, but I was talked into doing one more season by Phil Babbs. Not wishing to let a friend (or Cray's supporters) down, I reluctantly agreed to keep scribbling.

And, as a promise to Chairman Gary Hillman back in 2012, I continued to be involved with matchday programmes for as long as I was able to. I have always tried to serve this club well and to the best of my ability. It is not my choice that I cannot get to any of Cray's games all the while my wife remains ill, but it is my choice what football club I follow and what I may say about it, good or bad, different or indifferent.

I would just like to add at this point that, things have not changed for me since I penned the above article eleven years ago, apart from now being sidelined from writing articles for Cray's matchday programmes for the forthcoming 2025-26 season — and this is after I was recalled by the club last season to write some articles again. I still cannot get to any Wands matches for the personal reasons I have explained above and elsewhere on this blog site, I still have all those (free) contributions of time, skill set and knowledge that I have made to this club on my CV and, I still have my long, long memory of what I have seen right or wrong within the club over more than half a century. Perhaps a foreseeable future at Flamingo Park could put things right, just as I said in my article that I hoped Sandy Lane (had the move to there been successful) might do the trick. Only time will tell...