RIP Mayflower

….have a special place in my heart.  For one, they’ve broken it, not once, but twice: George Reilly lost an ear after scoring the winning goal for them in the ‘84 Cup semi (I have an alibi) and who knows what retribution awaits Hameur Bouazza for doing the same in last year’s quarter-final?  But more importantly, they are responsible for my obsession with the Greens, the mood swings, the money spent on season tickets, paraphrenalia, shirts, programmes, dreadful tea and the like.  It was a Watford fan - (now) Councillor Phil Kerridge - who took me to see Argyle play the Hornets in a Third Division game (that’s League 1 for people who think football began in 1992) on December 4 1978.  The first time.  You never forget your first time, and every aspect of the experience is seared into my soul.  One all, thanks to a sublime Barry Silkman goal replying to a Ross Jenkins header.  A few weeks later he took me to see Watford at Exeter - an excruciating 0-0, during which I spent almost the whole game delighting in the sprung rhythms of the name of the Watford goalie, one Andy Rankin,  and the opportunities those rhythms and rhymes afforded.  Watford went up that year and quickly hit the big time - they finished SECOND to Liverpool in the First Division in the 82-3 season, while Argyle struggled on until the arrival of the Ciderman.  But the damage was done: from that date, I was, for better or worse, a Pilgrim. Tomorrow’s game at Vicarage Road has added piquancy.  Al Bangura, Watford’s 19 year old midfielder, has just had his appeal against deportation rejected by the Home Office.  Despite being no burden whatsoever upon the British taxpayer, despite having a family here, including a young son, and despite very real threats to his life should he return to Sierra Leone, the government seems to want to Make An Example Of Him and Send Him Back Where He Belongs.People wishing to add their voices to the increasing number of those protesting this ridiculous decision can do any of a number of things.  They can write to their MP (www.writetothem.com).  They can sign the online petitions at www.claire-ward.org.uk  or at www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-al-bangura.  Above all, as Argyle fans, they can refrain from comments or chants at the game which they would later regret and which would be, given the circumstances, utterly inappropriate. The Watford players will be wearing T-shirts highlighting his plight tomorrow and obviously can be expected to be well up for this one.Watford’s blistering start having petered out somewhat, our current up-and-down form, and the persistent attempts at unsettling from the East Midlands make this especially hard to call.  Nalis and Connolly are both suspended, with Gosling likely to come in at RB and Hodges to move into CM, with Sawyer filling in at LB.  Lee Martin is still unfit, but Hayles is back from his suspension and he may well slot straight back in, possibly at the expense of SEB, after Easter’s impressive performance in Saturday’s 1-1 with Bristol City.  All this points to a blood-and-snotters game of the type beloved by Our Glorious Leader and more than likely a binary result: 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, or 1-1.

I hadn’t meant to say any more about the defection of Ian Holloway to Leicester City.  What’s done is done, there’s a new regime at HP and we have more pressing things to concern ourselves, such as denting the promotion push of upstart new boys Bristol City on Saturday (a side, bizarrely, I’ve always had a fair bit of time for).  But the fact remains that he just won’t leave it alone.   Instead of getting to grips with his new team - and let’s face it, for all Mandaric’s money, LCFC are a below-par, uninspiring motley collection of journeymen, raw youth and unadulterated crap - Holloway has been chasing the media wagon like a junkie short of a fix, desperate to put ‘his side of the story’ and explain to the world at large that he’s NOT a compulsive liar and NOT a money-grubbing tart like the rest of the football world.  His latest interview with the BBC is an embarrassment beyond even the Curb Your Enthusiamesque pantomime on Soccer AM: he rants at Stapleton and Sturrock and threatens, in faux Arnie terms, to return and plunder Argyle for the riches he was solely responsible for bringing to the club in the first place.

In order to try and bring some sense of realism to the hyperbole flying around at the moment, lets just take a breath.  Holloway left - and he admitted this himself - because he wasn’t up to the, yes enormous, challenge of getting Argyle promoted.  In the end, he realised he wasn’t man enough for the job.  Let’s be honest.  It will, with Mandaric’s money, be a darn site easier to get Leicester up than us: in fact, it ought to be a cakewalk.  A donkey should be capable of getting them promoted with the resources at their disposal: hardly “the biggest challenge of my career”.  No, by far, BY FAR, the bigger challenge is getting Argyle, a club with no money, not much of a permanent fanbase and bugger all sense of history and tradition, into the promised land of SkyPrem.  Holloway, quite simply, couldn’t handle the magnitude of the task.  Fair enough.  But he should now shut up about it.  And if he thinks Norris, Halmosi and Ebanks-Blake are meekly going to follow him to Leicester, he may be in for a shock.  They’re all on long contracts and Stapleton and Sturrock have made it plain that no-one is going without Argyle receiving well above the going rate.

Argyle fans could do themselves a huge favour and simply deny Holloway the oxygen of attention he so desperately craves.  Rather than haunting Leicester fan sites and getting embroiled in the utterly pointless ‘we’re better than you’ playground debates, we should simply be vocal in our support for Luggy and the team, be TURNING UP home and away.  Above all, we need to roar the boys on tomorrow.  We’re traditionally poor in front of a big crowd: and we need to win tomorrow, if we’re going to keep the play-off positions in our sights.  The team will need every ounce of lunchtime lung-busting we can give them.