It Stood, But Failed To Deliver

I remember the game against Bury on opening day like it was Yesterday. It was the hottest I have ever seen football played in and the only time I have seen the referee stop a game so the players can have a drinks break. Great times and the hat trick from Brad Maylett led us to start believing that the team were going to play their way out of the division.

Further entertainment against the likes of Cheltenham, Boston, Mansfield and Huddersfield and all of a sudden the Swans were top of the league. The odds offered by the bookies in the summer seemed a steal and fans started to count their winnings as many predicted a steamrollering towards the title.

Then came the stutter, we lost top spot against Hull - we were never to regain it again. Then we stopped scoring as we lost Lee Trundle and the taunts of the opposition of being a 'one man team' started to ring true. The FA Cup provided a welcome distraction but it only served to mask the league form which was slowly seeing us slip away from the play offs.

A win over Yeovil at Christmas restored the belief that promotion was on again but it was followed by all too few league wins in 2004. The cup run ended at Tranmere and the play off hopes slowly disappeared after that. But, surprisingly, so did the manager as the club dropped the bombshell that Brian Flynn and Kevin Reeves had departed with 10 league games remaining. Rumours surfaced about this, that and even some of the other but the silence from both parties has remained until this day as to the real reasons despite the press reading something into everything that was, or on many occasions, wasn't said.

The names came thick and fast - Cotterill, Aldridge, Burrows, Peter Reid but the Swans took the shirt off their back and put it on a Jackett as Kenny arrived in time to see the embarrassment of a 2-0 reverse at Rhyl. He celebrated success once - away at Darlington as the Swans finished 10th - 11 places up on last year but closer to the bottom than the top. And so we ended not with what we hoped but an improvement on last season's finish nevertheless.

It's hard to pin point exactly where it went wrong. We had a bad run of injuries and never came back from them. Some players came back and were injured almost immediately and the rumours, remain just that, rumours. The fact is it did go wrong and we have to learn from that mistake. We have made mistakes in the last two years but we do seem to be learning from them. If you learn, you will nearly always progress and that is the key factor in all of this.

There were highs to the season - the game against Preston at the Vetch won't be forgotten in a hurry. The trip to Tranmere was fun in terms of a day out and almost touching the quarter finals of what I still believe is the greatest cup competition anywhere. The lows would include those five minutes of madness against Oxford, the complete annihilation at Huddersfield (ten wouldn't have flattered us) and surprisingly, given my opinions on it, the change in management - more from the timing than the fact we were to change. Rhyl was laughable. The pre Christmas Lee Trundle was a joy to watch and Andy Robinson must be find of the season in this division, if not any of them.

We've shared the laughs, the joys and the utter disbelief together this season and we have survived it. We now wonder what the summer will bring and what odds we will be taking the Swans at come August, because, let's face it, you have to back your team don't you.

This season won't stick out in the memory for too long I must admit but it was another year in our history, the 92nd chapter of that book and we can only hope that next year will be better.

Click Here For The Season In Pictures

Why not check out the latest Vetch Verdict on the BBC site?