By Aidan Begley, Birmingham City fan, 19th May 2002
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"Darren Carter for The Premiership, the Premiership" was the words of ITV commentator Peter Drury last Sunday evening when the 18 year-old, Brummie born-and-bred slammed a penalty kick into the right-hand corner of the net to send us to the Promised Land. I still haven’t come down from cloud nine yet.

You see this is because I’ve never seen the Blues play in the top flight; I’m only a tender 20 year-old you see. While older Birmingham City fans were brought up on the team of the 70’s that included Trevor Francis, and Bob Latchford, my terrace heroes included Nigel Gleghorn, Ricky Otto and Kevin Francis. (Can you detect the sarcasm there?)

The past 16 years have been one of heartbreak and misery with the occasional splattering of joy. (I’ve seen us win at Wembley twice in ’91 and ’95 and promoted twice, ’92 and ’95) but Sunday more than made up for that.

Dropping down to the old division three was bad enough, but watching as we not once, but twice nearly went bankrupt really shows how far we’ve come in those uncertain years in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

There’s one thing that you learn while watching the blues, is that we don’t do things the easy way. Watching the Millwall game in the second leg of the play-offs this year, was causing me physical pain. So instead of scoring early in the game, and possibly try to sneak a second, ‘Bugger that’ the players thought and managed to drag it out and really do it the hard way, in the last minute of injury time, to send us on the way to Cardiff.

On the eve of a new season for the past six years, my friend and I have had the same conversation, the topic being "Will we go up this year?" Every year he has replied to me, "I’ve got a funny feeling, it’ll be our year." So in August 2001 when he told me this, following our third play-off defeat to Preston North End, I started looking at which first division grounds I’d like to go to next season.

Unfortunately I’m going to have to contend with Old Trafford, Highbury, Stamford Bridge and Anfield next season. Damn, what a chore.

Now before you think that I’m trying to rub it in to fans of other teams, I’m not. You’ve just got to simply understand what it’s like to finally be there. Two phrases had been attached to the blues for about 10 years now. Stop me if you’ve heard them for your team, they are "This club is a sleeping giant" and "I’m sure we’ll be there or thereabouts this season".

Aaargh! Whenever I heard anyone mention these when talking about the blues, I’d cringe. I knew we had this potential and were always near the top of the league, but getting there would be just too easy. Let’s throw in a few lost penalty shoot-outs, a couple of defeats on the trot and the last game of the season nervous wait to see if we were in the play offs. Now then, that’s making it much more interesting, isn’t it?

But all those heartbreaks, those long midweek trips to Grimsby only to watch as we lose 2-0 all were erased to the back of my mind when Jeff Kenna and Steve Vickers lifted that promotion trophy last Sunday.

I cried my eyes out. So did many of the thousands of blues fans there are dotted around the world. This was our day to celebrate after seeing so many before us do the same.

It may well be the case that we could come back down having lost all 36 games next season, but no-one will be able to take away that indescribable feeling I had when we’d won, but not only that, it was a penalty shoot-out, no less, and the complete and utter joy, when for the very first time in my life I was able to sing "We are Premier League, say we are Premier League".

I will never forget it.

Cheers,

Aidan

Ends

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