11-04-2024, 06:07 AM
What is the greatest promotion season in PFC history? Will 2002/3 ever be bested?
Great Promotions of Our Time.
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11-04-2024, 06:07 AM
What is the greatest promotion season in PFC history? Will 2002/3 ever be bested?
11-04-2024, 06:55 AM
Yes it will be bested.
This season and the reasons are. Although it was the sale of Crouch that funded Arry JC Redknapp and that season, Milan Mandaric did nothing, absolutely zero to upgrade fratton. We didn't own our own training ground. We were a joke of a club and quickly passed on to villains to play with. We survived liquidation several years later as a result of all of that episode. We delivered our club to responsible owners and their leadership and stewardship is bringing this reward. A reward that is truly ours and earned. A brand of football with a team of our players with mostly youth on their side and in updated stadium. This promotion if and when it's sealed is far better than that of 2003 which was built on a bed of quicksand I was there and enjoyed it as much as the next man, we really did, didn't we. But in hindsight it was wrong. We went up with nothing in place. We were a premier club in nothing but name. We go to the championship with stable owners, an updated ground, our own training ground, a vibrant team and an idea about how to maintain and grow.
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11-04-2024, 08:07 AM
I enjoyed Harry's season most, simply because I had an ST and was a steward on the away coaches so saw just about every game home and away. Topped off by being awarded the proper football league trophy which we had won before, I didn't realise til the team held it up.
Alan Ball's team were the hardest won, but winning by default on a Tuesday night was a huge anticlimax after years of traipsing up and down to Yorkshire, Watford allotments and Grimsby. Bobby Campbell, was my first full season so I had not had the downs to improve the ups. Superb team though! I would have enjoyed a promotion with Jim Smith even more, and that team fully deserved to go up. Including lots of our own youth team too.
11-04-2024, 08:08 AM
(11-04-2024, 07:25 AM)Theyak2 Wrote: Yes it will be bested. I always thought of Harry Redknapp as a stable owner
11-04-2024, 09:57 AM
(11-04-2024, 06:07 AM)Cressers Wrote: What is the greatest promotion season in PFC history? Will 2002/3 ever be bested? A nice question. All promotions are good in their own way, of course, helping us to forget the relegations that inevitably preceded them (apart from those promotions when we were new to the Football League). 2002-03 was great for some of the consistently best football I've seen at Fratton Park. But I think there's a fairly strong case for the 2016-17 promotion. First, it followed what must be the very darkest period in our history, and was the first concrete achievement in our rehabilitation as a club. Second, it was achieved under supporter ownership, so there was a tangible reward for those of us who were shareholders and especially those who gave their time, effort and skills to make the best use of the funds available. That all made the club no longer a basket case but an attractive proposition for the Eisners, serious business people and not the chancers we'd had previously. Next, just two months from the season's end, even a play-off place looked uncertain as I recall, and the L2 title in our dreams, so the final run-in and spectacular (if slightly fortuitous) final day, which I unfortunately had to miss, was the icing on the cake. So there was the element of surprise that we'd done it. Not perhaps the most memorable team, and I slightly struggle to recall who scored most of our goals, Naismith I guess, but a very fine defence with Stevens, Burgess and Clarke. It's just unfortunate that we couldn't follow it up with another promotion sooner than this season. (If it happens, of course!!) That's what I think, anyway.
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11-04-2024, 10:45 AM
86-87 was good. The two seasons that we narrowly missed out were devastating. Ballys team of loons and Nutjob’s finally did it . Great era of football under Bally and they deserved it .Problem was we didn’t last long in Div1.
11-04-2024, 01:24 PM
(11-04-2024, 10:45 AM)Bedhamptonblue69 Wrote: 86-87 was good. The two seasons that we narrowly missed out were devastating. Ballys team of loons and Nutjob’s finally did it . Great era of football under Bally and they deserved it .Problem was we didn’t last long in Div1. I still hate basketball! Just getting the hang of it, just hallelujahed all over Southampton and Deacon git face sold the captain!
11-04-2024, 01:51 PM
Northampton was so special because it meant that after years of decline we had hit the bottom and were bouncing back.
It was the first time many of us experienced any kind of success. Yes, we scraped up but finally we didn't have to listen wistfully from older fans relating tales of the championship and FA Cup winning teams. This, finally, was OUR success experienced in our time and it was so sweet. Although we knew it already, it underlined to us what a very special football club this is, a club that was not done with success, not by a long way.
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11-04-2024, 02:40 PM
Ditto.
11-04-2024, 03:33 PM
(11-04-2024, 01:24 PM)Hammie Wrote:(11-04-2024, 10:45 AM)Bedhamptonblue69 Wrote: 86-87 was good. The two seasons that we narrowly missed out were devastating. Ballys team of loons and Nutjob’s finally did it . Great era of football under Bally and they deserved it .Problem was we didn’t last long in Div1. Kennedy being sold was a big mistake . Yeah and Deacon seemed obsessed with the basketball
11-04-2024, 04:51 PM
The league 2 one was the big one for me.
Fan owned and what a finish to win the title. I don't think promotion will ever mean as much as that one
11-04-2024, 06:14 PM
(11-04-2024, 09:57 AM)SouthseaBubble Wrote:(11-04-2024, 06:07 AM)Cressers Wrote: What is the greatest promotion season in PFC history? Will 2002/3 ever be bested? I'm not old enough to remember 86/87 (honest) so I'm only going off what I recall. As a feel good moment, 16/17 is hard to top. Given the recent history, two pretty dire forst two seasons in league 2 and being fan owned makes it extra special and it wins out on pure feelgood factor. As special as that was though, as an on pitch achievement though it doesn't rank all that highly. We had a team you would realistically have expected to get promotion that season. We won the league but on an unspectacular 87 points. 02/03 Is easily the best as an achievement. A higher league and a 45 point improvement from the previous season was incredible. The manager was backed throughout the season (If I recall, the January transfer window didn't apply in the football league?) but to get to the tip division for the first time since it became the Premier League was immense. This season assuming we do get it over the line will be quite some achievement. 15 months ago we looked stagnant and depressing to watch. The Mousinho appointment was met with anger by many of our fans and mockery by most others. "When you order Jose Mourinho from wish.com" was a common insult). Even towards the end of last season we got Michael Eisner himself tweeting about a disappointing performance which suggested he didn't have total faith in our left field managerial appointment. Now we're 20 points better off than last season with power to add despite an almost unprecedented injury crisis throughout the season and in with a great chance of beating Derby and Bolton tonthe title.
11-04-2024, 06:24 PM
Bloody kids!
11-04-2024, 06:28 PM
(11-04-2024, 01:24 PM)Hammie Wrote:(11-04-2024, 10:45 AM)Bedhamptonblue69 Wrote: 86-87 was good. The two seasons that we narrowly missed out were devastating. Ballys team of loons and Nutjob’s finally did it . Great era of football under Bally and they deserved it .Problem was we didn’t last long in Div1. To this day, I am yet to forgive him. Coont.
11-04-2024, 06:42 PM
Like many others on here I suspect, this season will be the 6th I have witnessed as a Pompey fan and they have all had something special about them.
Northampton in 1980 was a great day out, and the first promotion a whole generation of fans had seen, but in retrospect scraping 4th place in the lowest division was not that great an achievement Bobby Campbell's team in 1983 was a smooth professional job by a team that was just too good for the rest of the league Alan Ball's 87 team will go down as one of my favourite teams, but I was left with a feeling that we should have managed it in one of the two prvious seasons. 2003 was the best team and probably the most enjoyable whole season I've ever seen 2017 was great because we were fan owned and it marked the beginning of the road back. But this season will be the greatest achievement IMO because of the crippling injury list that JM has overcome. I doubt any club has ever won promotion in a any league with 14 first teamers out injured, it really is an incredible achievement.
11-04-2024, 08:00 PM
I listened to Northampton in my grandad’s shed. He bought me a ST for 10 years and died just before the 87 promotion…was a weird feeling that one. 2003 was great to watch, 2017 was a fantastic last day to grab the title and be a part owner (lol), but agree, getting out of this league this year with a rookie manager and a full team of injuries will be something else.
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