Saturday 16th September 2006: A date to remember, as it's the last time Barnsley picked up three points from a game of football, the last time the men in red actually won a game.
Tonight's 2-1 defeat at Derby County leaves Andy Ritchie's men 2nd from bottom of the Championship and facing relegation back to the wastelands of League One once again.
The Reds have now lost 6 of their last 7 games in all competitions, including the last 3.
I think its time a few facts were brought to light.
1. First and foremost let us just get this clear. WE WERE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO GO UP!
We were the 5th that's FIFTH best team League One last season. In most sports 5th wouldn't even get you a mention the roll of honour. 1st yes 2nd go on then, 3rd maybe.
We finished 5th in the poorest league ever seen in the history of professional football and even went nearly 2months without winning in that.
5th won us a reprieve in the form of the play-offs and it's a good job we got Huddersfield and not Brentford in the semi-finals otherwise the dream would have ended a lot sooner.
We were poor in the first leg, dreadful in the first half of the second leg and then put on a burst of energy to hit 3 goals that took us through to the final.
Over to Cardiff and we were left licking our backsides for 2hours just hoping that Swansea didn't grab a winner before laughing as Willy Gueret opted to dive the wrong way for every single Barnsley penalty and his team-mates Adebayo Akinfenwa and Alan Tate produced two of the poorest penalties your ever likely to see.
2. Andy Ritchie's decision to give the players who took us up a chance in the Championship.
Loyalty is something rarely honoured in football these days so yes you have to applaud Andy for sticking by his men but as Iv said we were the 5th best team in League One last season. If we had run away with the league fair enough, maybe they can hack it. They didn't and at times some of the football served up was woeful. They have simply carried that form on.
We hear every week now how unlucky we were because we “dominated” the game. We weren't unlucky we aren't good enough.
At Cardiff, a cross comes in, Michael Chopra puts it in, over at Oakwell, a cross comes in Marc Richards heads it over the bar or wide. That happens a couple of times in a game, Cardiff win, Barnsley lose, and people say we are unlucky. That's not luck that's ability, quality.
The majority of these players aren't good enough for the Championship, in my opinion people like Richards weren't even good enough for League One!
Its going to be a long winter folks, I hope I'm wrong, I doubt it!