With just two minutes to go at tonight Turf Moor exploded as Jay Rodriguez took advantage of some Gomes like keeping from Gomes’ stand-in to poke a left foot volley into the back of the net. That moment will be like almost nothing those fans have seen before. The ground was pulsating. They had pulled off the seemingly impossible; the little Championship side had pulled back a three goal deficit from a full strength Tottenham side against all odds. Words can’t describe how great it would have felt to be in that ground. This blogger was preparing a list of all time great comebacks. All they had to do was survive extra time unscathed…
Just half an hour later, those same fans would be leaving the stadium utterly crushed. Having been just two minutes away from a dream day at Wembley they conceded not one but two late goals as their legs tired. Tottenham didn’t deserve one goal on the night never mind two. During extra time the BBC’s 606 service was inundated with Tottenham fans saying that they hoped they didn’t score because they deserved it that little.
Losing under such circumstances makes you feel about as bad as a football match can because you’ve fallen from the hights of elation to the depths of despair in the blink of an eye. On 117 minutes Burnley fans were dreaming of Wembley, on 118 the dream was crushed as Pavlyuchenko wheeled away in celebration.
The question is was it worth them climbing that mountain given how bad it feels to fall from the peak? In April last year I sat as one of only two Arsenal fans in a whole Dublin bar as Theo Walcott produced one of the greatest runs of all time to put Arsenal ahead on away goals with just 6 minutes remaining. Dancing on the table seconds later was the happiest a single moment of football has ever made me feel. Just a minute later as Kolo Toure felled Ryan Babel was the worst a single moment of football has ever made me feel. That run, like the triumphant end to Burnley’s comback tonight, deserved to win any football match. I was utterly desolate.
Wouldn’t it have just been better to have lost deservedly? A simple 2-0 reverse would leave you disappointed and down sure, but utterly gutted? Hardly. In the depths of footballing despair that moment of elation feels a lifetime away, snatched away as though it were never there.
Of course the ups and downs of football is what makes being a fan so great. To quote Robbie Williams, “you’ll never get high unless you taste the lows”. It really is better to get that close, to know how much you deserved it, but it sure as hell won’t feel like that now for the Burnley fans.
