Ian Mulvey reaches the end of the season.
It's The End of The Season As We Know It
(and I should feel fine)
It's the 5th of May 1994 and I'm rattling out this article to meet the print deadline for the 15th issue of "Waiting for The Great Leap Forward" I'm 27('n' a half) and have followed the 'Well for over twenty of those years and at last my team have managed to achieve one of those things that 'Well fans have been waiting for, for so long - a European place as a reward for a full season's worth of exceptionally good football and you can say what you like and you can send your Archie McPhersons and your Walter - "of course I didn't see the incident/jammy deflection/ penalty claim/my team being played off the park etc. etc. I was making my way down from the stand" Smiths and especially your Gerry McNees along if you like - but for once , just once we played the best football on show in Scotland , by far, this season and I defy anyone to tell me otherwise. Am I happy? Well I was on Saturday (The Kilmarnock game) but like Brian Martin heading a muddy mitre - the shines already beginning to wear off. Why?
Well I can't help but feel really gutted for Wee Tommy, who wether you like it or not has transformed our club, achieved so much and who looked as if he was in with the bricks, appears to have been forced into a position where he may have to leave the club. Why is it when we finally achieve something of note instead of consolidating we tend to suffer from uncontrollable vertigo and go and throw ourselves off the nearest derelict steel work roof? I find it hard to believe that instead of celebrating 10 years of progress (seasonally adjusted) under McLean and talking about how we were so much in the red and now were and..........how we won the cup and how we are in a healthier position than most other clubs, (bar one probably) and how we have a team on the park that's the most exciting since 'The Ancell Babes' (so I'm told) and "The cobra" going to the world cup and so on and so on - We're talking about how our chairman is reported as saying that he wants a ceiling on salaries, How our board appear to be unable to realise that we have in charge the man who has been responsible for the biggest change in fortunes of a football club, that anybody I know can recall. And how he's been forced into feeling that it was necessary to relieve himself of his position on the board. I know it can't be true but to me and many others it all stinks of "Hold on! This is as far as we want to go" surely as we progress we should have a salary scale to match, to keep the management and best players at the club as well as new players to it. The talk of ceiling is absolutely insane. We have enough factors to struggle against without inventing more of our own to hold us back.
So as we go to press it's unclear who our manager will be next season to lead us Europe. What an absolute shambles of a situation. No wonder our club is the brunt of corner shop type jokes. I just hope we can have it sorted out and have the wee man where he belongs - It's hard to imagine the club without him - even considering the rough time we all gave him last year - And that myself and yourself can get on with the job of celebrating "Being Motherwell" and "Being in Europe".
Ian Mulvey
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