The Unbelievable Story of the Underdog

It's reaching crunch time at the end of the season.

Lowly league two Swindon have finished their regular season, and cemented their place in the playoffs.

Although their first leg match against Coventry is on sunday, for saturday, all eyes are turned on the Premiership.

For saturday is the final round of the premiership, and two matches in particular are of great significance to the Wiltshire club.

The Robbins haven't been affected by premier legue results since 1994, back when England's top league played host to 22 clubs.

But this season having beaten some illustrious opposition to reach the 2079 FA Cup final, once again top flight results would have a key impact on the season of the 1969 league cup winners, currently plying their trade in the fourth teir of English football.

For their opponents for this hstoric FA cup encounter would be the might of Manchester United.

Going in to the final round of the Premiership season, United sat 4th, occupying the final champions league spot, one point behind third place Bournemouth, who had been on a poor run of form of late, and two points ahead of challengers Liverpool.

In the final match of the season, Man Utd would face off against Bournemouth, while Liverpool would be playing a mid-table Bradford side with only pride to play for.

The situation is thus. If Man U win or if Liverpool fail to, then the Manchester team would qualify for the Champions league and Swindon Town would qualify for the UEFA Cup, regardless of the result of the cup final.

Even if Man U draw, then liverpool would need to win by five goals to overcome the Red Devil's superior goal difference.

With ten minutes left on the clock Bournemouth, themselves not yet sure of Champions league football next season, were leading Man U comfortably by two goals to nil.

However, over in merseyside, while not really taking the game to their opponents, Bradford had been holding the star studded Liverpool side to a goalless draw.

The Swindon fans baited their breath and bited their nails.

But disaster struck!

In the 84th minute James Thompson scored for Liverpool, as they'd been threatening to all game, from a scrappy corner and pushed Man U out of the Champios league spots.

The remaining six minutes brought no joy to the Swindon support following the results, with Bournemouth adding another goal to their tally being generally no help at all.

And so the season finished.

If swindon were going to do it, they'd have to do it by themselves.

So the day of the cup final approached.

Having seen off Coventry betweentimes, the Swindon players must have had a slight eye on their play off final two days later, but there was no doubt that this was the one they were up for.

Wembly was packed for the biggest David versus Golliath encounter in the competition's history.

The omens were good, and within 10 minutes United's £8m rated star striker had got himself injured, to be replaced by 18 year old Tony Atkkinson, bought for £16k from Preston in January.

But the match proceded as a largely defensive afair, with neither side providing much goalmouth action, the longer the match stayed goalless, the more the Robbins fans hoped they could have a chance to steal the greatest FA Cup shock ever.

For the second time that fortnight, disaster struck!

With quarter of an hour to go Italian centreback Vincenzo Cioffi put United ahead from a well worked corner.

As the clock ran down, Swindon piled on the attack, Nick Booth in particular getting in all sorts of promising positions, but failing to make any of his shots hit the target.

And that's the way it finished.

Of course every story needs a happy ending, and this one is no different.

While no-one knows the exact details of what goes on in FA HQ at Soho Square, you can't accuse them of not having a heart.

Having had their hopes dashed in the closing minutes three times that season (they also lost the play off final on penalties to Braintree), someone had clearly decided to cut them some slack.

When England's list of European representatives was announced, there was little Swindon, mixing it with the likes of Ajax, Juventus and AC Milan in the UEFA cup.

Blackburn fans may feel slightly aggrieved (and you'd have to conceed, they would have a point), but thank's to what I can only assume was a reasonably major administrative cockup, this dog did indeed, did eventually, have it's day.

At a push I think you want the stories forum, 3 doors down on the left.

Stories Or just there even!

If you ask A mod nicely they may move it! Cause rewriting it is gonna be a job!

Stories Or just there even!

If you ask A mod nicely they may move it! Cause rewriting it is gonna be a job!

Never heard of copy + paste?

I think the stories forum is for stories that are ongoing, wheras this is more of an interesting anecdote, and there's not really anything that's going to be added to it.

That did turn out a lot longer than I was expecting it to be though!

Anyone had any similar experiences?