Our first blog in time for new season welcomes a brand new signing and with his first Owls Blog, David Crookes goes straight into the line up on Wednesdayite.com.

David is a Season Ticket holder and Wednesdayite member and tells of his love affair with the Owls and how it started way back in 1962...

My personal love affair with the Owls began on a Monday evening in October 1962 when my Dad introduced me to professional football by taking me to Hillsborough to see the mighty, much revered Pele and his Santos team.  This was the start of a relationship that, like all classic love affairs, has had its inevitable highs and lows and charted a sea of emotions ranging from elation to sorrow to occasional bitterness.

My memories of that night are only hazy, being a young boy, although I do distinctly remember the seething mass of spectators, almost 50,000, in attendance and the excitement when the Brazilians ran out in their all-white strip accompanied by our boys in classic blue & white stripes and black shorts, under the Hillsborough lights. It didn’t really matter that we lost 4-2, the whole experience was magical to me, and it is not too pretentious or dramatic to state that this was one of the formative events of my childhood.  There could not have been a starker contrast when, seeing my enthusiasm for the game, my Dad next took me to see my home town team Chesterfield play in the old Division Four. Indeed, I have no recollection of who the opponents were or the result, I just remember pining for the atmosphere of Hillsborough.

So it is that, forty-eight years after my first Owls fixture against the boys from Sao Paulo with their samba beat and exotic flair, I’ll take my place in the North Stand to welcome our first visitors of the 2010/11 season................... Dagenham & Redbridge.  I do not wish to patronise or belittle the Essex club who have done marvellously well to gain entry to the Football League and then promotion in such a short space of time. However I would wager that I was not alone when, on reading the published fixtures for the new season, my heart sank at this confirmation of our club’s diminished status. Continuing the love affair analogy, I feel as though I have been discarded by Penelope Cruz and entered into romantic assignations with Deirdre Barlow.

And yet I look forward to 7 August with a sense of cautious optimism. Although every supporter of every club in the land always views the new season with the conviction that things will be better this time around, for the first time in a number of years I feel that my positivity is not simply wishful thinking. Yes, at the time of writing there is still boardroom uncertainty and a lack of inward investment, but I feel that under Alan Irvine and his staff we have a real opportunity to make progress on the pitch.

Although the last campaign ended in such acute disappointment, I think most fans would agree that there was an enhanced organisation and sense of purpose to our play following Alan’s replacement of the discredited Brian Laws. The additions to the squad to date appear to represent the character and quality that will be needed to make a sustained drive towards promotion and are a departure from the seemingly ad-hoc approach of Mr. Laws (Ronnie Wallwork?).

No doubt there will be fierce competition from our League One rivals, particularly Southampton, Swindon, Huddersfield, Notts County and Peterborough, but with the rub of the green in terms of injuries and refereeing decisions I firmly believe that there is every chance that we could be at or near the top of the pile come the end of the season.

David.


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