Crystal Palace: Fear and Pride

Article by e-Crystal Palace Correspondent Darryl Murdoch

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I was looking through some old emails relating to my cricket team, trying to find the contact details of our groundsman and I came across an email I sent towards the end of April 2010 regarding our club’s fixture on Sunday 2nd May 2010. I read “I can’t play on Sunday guys, I’m off to Hillsborough to possibly watch Palace for the last time!”

For those of you that don’t know, Sunday 2nd May 2010 was the day Palace played Sheffield Wednesday on the final day of the Championship season. A win for Wednesday would mean that Palace, in administration since January, would be relegated to League One and whilst this wouldn’t automatically mean the end for the club, relegation that day, and the potential repercussions meant that I, among many who travelled that day, feared it could be last time we went to see Crystal Palace FC in it’s current form.

What struck me as I read that email was how quickly those feelings of dread come flooding back to you. I sit here writing this article in a week where Palace will take on the Premier League Champions at home, with a real chance of beating them but it doesn’t stop me thinking what might have been had that result on that day not gone the way it did.

I then saw this collage, made and tweeted by @truecpfcfans which documents in pictures the incredible journey this football club has been on since we secured that 2-2 draw up at Hillsborough almost 4 years ago.

I am lucky enough to have been present for some of the amazing moments that have happened since that day – the feeling of relief outside Lloyd’s Bank a month later, when, in the rain, we were told that CPFC2010 had an ‘agreement in principle’ to buy Selhurst and could then purchase the club and take us out of administration cannot be described, I just hope I never have to feel again. From that day, to this, the Crystal Palace rollercoaster has taken us all the way to the Premier League via the depths of New Years Day at the Den in 2011, losing to Cardiff on penalties just over a year later in the League Cup Semi Final to the highs of winning at the Amex and then Super Kev at Wembley dispatching that penalty to take us up.

Reading that email from almost 4 years ago has brought back all of the feelings in my stomach I had back then when I feared for the future of my club. This Saturday, once again my stomach will be churning, but it won’t be fear that I feel, it will be pride – pride in the incredible journey that my football club has been, and continues to be on.

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