Member-only story
What a feeling!
Crystal Palace has done it again
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What a feeling it was on Wednesday night! My club, Crystal Palace, beat Spain’s Rayo Vallecano 1–0 in Leipzig to win the European Conference League. Just a little over a year ago, Crystal Palace had never won a major trophy. Now, in the space of a year, the team has won three! And this time it was done in Europe.
Emotions
Since I’ve followed Palace in the mid-80s, there’s been mostly false dawns and unfulfilled expectations. And that’s not even considering the let-downs supporters experienced previously, such as in the late 70s when Palace was meant to be the ‘team of the ’80s’. That was a moniker I frequently heard over the years. Didn’t quite work out that way.
In fact, until the last 13 years, most of Palace’s recent history has been in the second division, now known as the Championship. It was always a tough battle to get into what’s now the Premier League.
And even now, I can still remember how upset I was back in the 1986–87 season when I heard that we’d lost to lowly Shrewsbury. I was really hopeful we’d get promoted to the top flight, but results like that certainly brought me back to earth.
