NIGHT JOURNEY

365 days in 2009 and for 334 of those days, Saints have not been out of the relegation zone in either of the leagues they have competed in during the year. First it was relegation from the Championship and the for the first 16 games of this season suffering the ten points deduction for going into administration.

So it was with keen anticipation that I made the 240 miles round trip to Southampton yesterday to see Saints take on the Chairboys of Wycombe Wanderers, themselves languishing in the drop zone of League One. A win for Saints, along with other results going their way, would finally haul us out of the danger zone and see us begin the climb to safer waters. As it turned out, Saints managed a narrow 1-0 win against limited opposition, but the margin of victory could and should have been much greater than the single goal scored just before half time by Ricki (Southampton`s goal machine) Lambert, who notched his 15th of the season so far. That result, coupled with Charlton beating Brighton 2-0, with their second slotted home by near neighbour Scott Wagstaff, saw Saints climb to 20th in the league. So there was dancing in the streets of Southampton last night as the 334 days of embarrassment finally came to an end.

My journey down was a long one, caught up in the rush hour traffic on the M25, the A31 at Guildford and Farnham and the M27 from Winchester and it took three hours to make the journey, but I had given myself plenty of time for the 7.45 kick-off. I thought that the journey home might have been easier and for much of the time it was. However, there were a few interruptions to my smooth progress, with overnight roadworks causing delays on the route out of Southampton and again, along with diversions, at various points along the motorways, all of which meant that I didn`t get home until about 1.00am this morning.

Two things struck me about it all though. The first was that for all the inconvenience caused by the roadworks, the guys who carry out that demanding essential maintenance work in the dead of night, in the freezing cold, in the pouring rain and on the most dangerous stretches of road, deserve our admiration and our thanks - my delays and diversions were nothing compared with all they have to contend with.

The second was that people might think I have lost my mind, at 70, driving all that way to see a football match with significance only to followers of the lower reaches of the third tier of English football. But, as a good friend of mine reminded me recently, `You`re a long time dead,` so get on and do what you enjoy doing while you can. And I do. So there.