At the age of 17 in 1983 I first played club football for a local under-18 team.
As part of a fund raiser for the club, every player chipped in a couple of dollars towards a raffle of sorts that I never fully understood. The raffle involved randomly drawing the name of a team from the then Division One and the results of that club somehow determined the outcome of the raffle.
I hoped to get my “team” Liverpool, but drew some side I’d never heard of, the newly promoted Luton Town FC. I’ve been a fan ever since.
It’s never been boring being a Hatters fan. The infamous “plastic pitch”, the West Ham riot and the following ban on away fans, just to mention a few incidents, and most years either fighting relegation or promotion.
We beat Arsenal to win the League Cup in 1988, missed out on a place in Europe thanks to the Heysel disaster, and lost to Nottingham Forest in the League Cup final the next year.
Luton dropped out of the top league in 1992, the season before it became the Premiership, and spent the next 12 years moving up and down the lower leagues. The Hatters reached the FA Cup semi-final almost 20 years ago to the day in 1994, their one and only game I’ve managed to attend live.
In 2005-06 Luton was again flying high in the Championship, but like the Titanic, was unaware of the iceberg that was about to sink the club.
A dodgy owner saw the club enter administration, suffer a 10-point deduction, and back-to-back demotions. At the time, one of the managers complained about the practice of bungs (dodgy player transfer payments) in the league, including at Luton.
In 2008-09 season Luton was relegated for the third year in a row thanks to a massive 30-point deduction, partly due to “improper financial dealings” bought to light by the previous manager. For the first time in 83 years Luton was out of the professional football leagues.
The massive points deduction has never been satisfactorily explained to the clubs supporters. Those responsible had long since departed, and other clubs have since been found to have had similar issues without such severe deductions.
In the meantime, the club was taken over by a financial group made up mostly of genuine club supporters.
Today, five years and five managers after being banished to the non-professional leagues, Luton has won the Conference Premier title, and automatic promotion back into League Two with three games to spare, thanks in no small part to a mid-season 26-game unbeaten run.
There was one defining moment this season.
After years of frustration, it took little for the fans on game day to turn against the team. Other clubs knew this and would try to use it to their advantage.
After a slow start to the season, at one home match, one fan let his feelings be heard in no uncertain terms. The team went on to win the game, and afterwards club captain Ronnie Henry personally confronted the fan.
In a masterstroke of PR, the fan was invited to training to see how hard the players worked, and was then invited to the player huddle at the next home game. This simple act united all fans behind the team, and Kenilworth Road has been a fortress ever since.
With a good manager, a relatively young squad, a number of genuinely high quality signings, and an ambitious, but responsible club management in place, the Town is a club finally on the way up again.
It’s a great day to be a Hatter!
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