Who needs 'Roy of the Rovers' when you've got 'Eddie of the Cherries'

Club captain Tommy Elphick celebrating with the fans

It's been referred to as a 'Roy of the Rovers' moment, after the British staple football comic book hero, because it feels like a work of fiction.  But no, it's real life - AFC Bournemouth have won promotion to the Premier League.

When the news is dominated by the election and the earthquake in Nepal (and it's hard to decide which is the most depressing) this is a rare good news story.  And not just for fans of the football club - it seems nearly everyone with an interest in the sport has been cheered by this news.

In 2009 the club was almost snuffed out of existence.  Bournemouth had spent years in financial dire straights.

I was born in Poole, next to Bournemouth, in Dorset, on the south coast of England.  My parents were both Northern - My Dad a coach driver from Manchester and my Mum a nurse from Accrington in Lancashire.  When they married they moved down south because it meant my Dad would spend less time away from home due to the tours he could do.

Our neighbours thought they were grockels - a local slang term meaning tourist.  My Mum's accent is still strongly Lancashire even after well over 30 years on the south coast, so many still think that.

Through them both, but mostly my Mum, I developed a passion for Manchester United.  There is an absolutely valid argument that says that you should support your local club.  However, I never remember there being any pull to do so when I was young.

If you live in a big city like Manchester, Liverpool or London I suppose this makes sense.  For somewhere like Poole the nearest City (and it's still an hour away) is Southampton.

Kids at school supported a variety of teams, the most popular in the 80s being Liverpool, closely followed by Manchester United and I suppose Southampton with a bit of Arsenal and Spurs thrown in.

My family roots were not from the town, so it makes sense the route I took in following my Mum's team.  In the early 90s when I started to get into football United changed from being a team with history, to being a team that started to make it's own history again.

I do not remember there being any pull to watch Bournemouth when I was growing up, I don't even remember kids at school supporting them at all.  Watching the local news I picked up that they were a small club that were permanently in financial risk.

The first time I went was in 1999 to watch them play in a pre-season friendly against Southampton, and the only reason I went was because former United front man Mark Hughes had just signed for Southampton.

Whilst the match was not particular memorable, I enjoyed the atmosphere.  I had been to Old Trafford a few times, which is a hell of a stadium of course, but the rawness of a rickety stadium like Dean Court (as it was then) stood in the terraces - the experience struck something with me.

I was 17 and in a summer job in a factory, so had a bit of money and freedom to spend it for the first time.  Doing a morning shift on the first Saturday of the season me and a lad got chatting and decided to go.  I found out which was the football bus using the google of the time - i.e. by asking my Dad.  Then off we went.

The first game was against newly promoted Lincoln City, and we won comfortably 2-0.  I remember seeing Mark Stein playing up front for us.  A very handy striker who, with age, was starting to come down a bit in his career (he had played for Chelsea before us).  He also looked like a small boy with some kind of weird ageing disorder.  A top player though.

This experience was enough.  Being a bit shy I only went because there was someone else who wanted to go too (even the friendly against Southampton was with my Dad).  But after that I was happy to go by myself, and went to nearly every home game that season.  It was a big turnaround compared to previous years and they only just missed out on the play-offs.

There were some great players then.  Richard Hughes who went on to play in the Premiership with Portsmouth.  A great defence as well with full back Neil Young and Jamie Vincent who would overlap in attack (a style of play still adopted to this day) and the centre backs in Ian Cox and a promising young lad called Eddie Howe (I wonder what happened to him?).

Alongside him was Mr Bournemouth himself - Steve Fletcher.  I must admit, I wasn't smitten at first.  A big target man of a centre forward, his job was to dominate in the air, hold up the ball and win flick ons for team mates.

To me he was big, awkward and slow, and not much of a goal scorer.  Others who were Bournemouth hardcore fans explained to me that despite what my eyes had been telling me, he was in fact a legend.  Over time, I got it.

Eddie Howe and Steve Fletcher in their younger day, doing their bit

When in 2009 he scored the only goal in the last game of the season to save Bournemouth from relegation, I got it.  On that day if we had lost we would have been relegated out of the football league altogether, and would soon have gone out of business completely.

Our leading appearance maker covering 20 seasons might not have been Messi, but he gave every bit of himself on the pitch, and we loved him for it.  He now has one of the stands at Dean Court named after him.

Next year is going to be strange for me.  As I said before, I was brought up supporting Manchester United - this is ingrained.

Supporting Bournemouth as well reminds me of what Irish friends have said about supporting football.  In Ireland many support an English team and a Scottish team, knowing that it made no difference because they would never meet.

In the years I have been going to watch Bournemouth I know that a lot of the supporters have other teams they follow as well.  However, there is of course the core of fans who are pure Bournemouth.

For them there was never a choice.  Generations of their family supporting the one club, no matter what division, no matter how little money they had.  These are the fans who put the hands in their own pockets to help save the club time and again from complete destruction.

All of that was just to have a club to watch and support FULL STOP.  However, enter Max Denim, a run of the mill Russian billionaire who lives in Sandbanks.  Many have heard of this tiny area of land on the coast in Poole because it has the highest concentration of millionaires anywhere in Britain.

To many when I say I'm from Poole this is all they know, not realising the Poole is an average working class town, albeit with a big slant towards tourism and a few rich folk with yachts.  Well, one of them provided AFC Bournemouth with a personal loan of £10 million.  This was to stop the club going bankrupt, but now look at us.

There has certainly been money spent on this current squad, but not a ridiculous amount, and certainly very wisely invested.  A few years ago you start to see midfielders and defenders that cost 100-200k here and there.  Not huge sums compared to the big players in the game, but for us more than we had ever been able to spend before.

Throw in to the mix a young genius of a manager in Eddie Howe, and we are now set to join the elite in the Premier league.  He's seen us through from survival in 2009 to being promoted three times in 6 years.  He recently won the football league manager of the decade, quite an accolade to say he hasn't even been in management for the full decade.  But still, an award richly deserved.

I have lived in Manchester for over 10 years, so most of the matches I have seen them in have been away matches around the region.  I have loved every minute.  You get the hardcore support, lots of singing and passion, just what football should be about.

Hoping these Blackpool fans don't kick off.  We had just beaten them 6-1!

Although I'm delighted to see the club in the Premier league next year, there will be changes.  I'm used to turning up to grounds like Bury and Doncaster - big open stadiums in which you pay to enter a certain stand then can sit where you like.  Not that I ever sit of course, I'm stood through out singing my heart out.

Not in the Premier league though, shit hot stewards and cameras, tight controls to make you sit down and shut up.  I think it's fair to say though that after all these years of hard work and pain, the Bournemouth fans will be ready to cheer no matter what conditions they are put in.

I hope to be there singing alongside them too.  That's if they don't mind a weird northern sounding grokel being there, that is.




Bringing me down to earth, I expect my next blog will be about how awful the outcome is from after the election.  I'm not predicting who will win, just that whatever happens, it will be awful...