Luton Town have had a few poor years recently, mainly due to inscrupulous management of the football club and without going into the ins and outs of it all, we have been deducted a load of points that means that survival in the league is nigh on impossible.
However, there are several separate competitions in England, one of which is the football league trophy, or as it is known, the Johnstone's Paints Football League Trophy.
The points deductions and poor management of the club have all combined to really galvanise Luton supporters and the fact that we made the final at Wembley was a massive, massive achievement.
Sure, all the arrogant supporters who follow Manchester, Liverpool, Chelsea, yawn, Arsenal, ho hum, etc can disparage clubs like Luton and this trophy but what do they know about supporting a team when it is doing it tough? Nothing. And I am glad I am not a supporter of one of these teams.
Anyway, so it was that Samantha and I secured tickets and much to my surprise, Luton sold 40,000 tickets to the match - in the process setting a new record for the most amount of supporters at the New Wembley Stadium from the one club!
We drove down on the day of the match and Scunthorpe is basically on the way from our place in Durham. Consequently we saw loads and loads of their fans along the way, until we went through Luton and we were out in force.
Orange is the colour our supporters were asked to dress in and there was orange everywhere once we got to the stadium!
The famous Wembley Way was absolutely awash with orange and it was absolutely fantastic to see such support for my grand old club.
Scunthorpe are a very handy team and were in the division above us. In fact, just to make the final we had had to beat three teams in the league above us as well as the best team in our league, so it wasn't an easy run by any means.
So, to the game - after a very loud and well deserved booing to the person who presided over Luton's points deduction Scunny took an early lead which certainly quietened the Luton end. However, we equalised with a well taken goal from Chris Martin - 1 all at half time, cool.
Second half, Scunny had most of the ball but then we went up the other end and Tom Craddock controlled brilliantly and put one away, holy moly, 2-1 up and we went mental...!!!
Two minutes remaining, can we hang on?
No, was the short answer and of course not as Scunny scored a superb goal - fair play, what a great goal....but we are Luton and nothing is ever easy for us!
2 all at full time.
Extra time required.
Could we do it? We looked very tired...but no, out we came, looking good and five minutes into the first period of extra time and Claude Gnakpa, our substitute, latched onto a through ball, lofted the ball over the oncoming keeper and after what seemed an age, the ball bounced across the line and hit the net.
Incredible! 3-2 up....!!!
From there, we looked pretty solid and there was no real problem from Scunny and we ran out victors in an awesome match which saw my club triumph over adversity and claim the trophy!
What a brilliant day and certainly one of the best sporting matches I have ever been to!
