My football team, Southend United, play in the National League (Vauxhall Conference in old money), so non-league football for me is where it's at.
It won't have escaped many of you that last weekend saw probably the most exciting end to a league season in a long time, with the top 2 in the League - Rochdale and York - playing each other, and just a point for York being good enough to be crowned champions.
I spent the early afternoon that day on a gorgeous walk in the Durham countryside, relentlessly refreshing the BBC Sport website, checking on the score ... and then switching to BBC Radio Manchester for the end of the match from the comfort of my car.
It felt like old times — like keeping an eye on Ceefax. Maybe that’s why it took me back to watching Newcastle 3–2 Barcelona in a pub in 1997 — a result that still gets talked about where I work in Newcastle. I didn't need to be at the Rochdale game, or watching it on tv, to be part of it. I still enjoyed every minute of tension and anticipation, glued to the BBC Sport website, along with more than 65,000 others who were doing the same.
Sometimes the simplest forms of comms are the most powerful.
