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So the season had come to this, all boiling down to a minute of mad, twisted, sick drama at Griffin Park. The referee, who had shown he was totally out of his depth all afternoon, stunned everyone inside the stadium by awarding the Bees a penalty deep, deep into injury time… The Bees HAD to win to achieve automatic promotion, and here it was on a plate, Championship football, just ONE KICK away… But it was all too much for some fans to take… Men, women, children, all tearful; the magnitude of the moment was palpable…

Dark clouds were gathering overhead, but surely this ONE KICK would send the stadium in to delirium… This ONE KICK would eradicate all those Bees heartache moments and consign the club’s previous failures to a dark corner of our memories that we’d not have to revisit again… This ONE KICK would transform the history of our football club.

But the players were arguing about who should take it… never a good sign… Marcello Trotta, the Fulham loan player who had been on the pitch for less than ten minutes, had grabbed the ball and was clearly in no mood to hand responsibility to anyone else… He WANTED it… He’d scored a penalty at Sheffield United, when Sam Saunders had missed, so why shouldn’t he? Sam clearly DIDN’T want it, or knew it had been tasked to another… But what about Kevin O’Connor… The Brentford legend? Kev is club captain, an experienced penalty taker, the man for who it had apparently been AGREED would take penalties against Doncaster… he wasn’t happy… Words were exchanged… But Trotta was adamant, he looked confident. Bees fans looked sick with worry.

I looked to the heavens and asked a question… Okay, I am not a man of faith, but this seemed a moment where, if a God does exist, he might just be in the mood to grant me a little favour… after all, I’m not a bad fella at the end of the day. I asked him; “Please, just this once, for me and for my son, and for all my mates that are here, and for all the Bees fans everywhere…” One little prayer, ahead of one big kick. ONE KICK.

The Italian stepped up purposely and absolutely leathered the ball… It was not one of those nervy, half-hearted, poor excuses of a penalty kicks, this was a manly wallop… The thousands standing behind the Ealing Road end goal visibly recoiled as the ball was struck. In that moment Brentford were about to be promoted, Doncaster stripped of their automatic place by a last gasp, cruel twist… Nine months of achievement, a large proportion of which had seen Rovers lead the table, was to be snatched away. This was our fate, our destiny, all our dreams, and the fantasy finish to a fantastic season… This was OUR time. ONE KICK.

But what happened next was plain sick… SICK. Trotta hit it hard aright, so hard that he helped set up a goal for Doncaster. As the ball cannoned off the crossbar, eleven thousand hearts broke… it was simply too much to take, for most to comprehend, let alone cope with… Especially the players, many of whom had started to drop to the ground… Like they’d been taken out by a Donny sniper.

A green flare was let off in the away end by a Rovers fan who obviously didn’t care about a ban from Griffin Park, they were going up again… But they weren’t JUST going up were they? No, they had scored… They had scored from OUR penalty… And now they were friggin’ CHAMPIONS. I’ve never heard anything so perverse in my life..

That shit doesn’t happen in the real world, in fact I’m not sure that twisted shit happens in the fantasy world either. Has any team ever won the title with the last kick of the season from a rebounded penalty kick AGAINST them? That’s impossible, right?

And my last impression of the afternoon as I left the stadium, with my young son balling his eyes out, was of a giant police horse taking a giant piss on the centre circle… the centre circle where I should have been standing with him, watching the Brentford players held shoulder high. An ironic and poignantly surreal image if ever there was one.

Uwe will have the Brentford players gathered somewhere warm and quiet today hopefully, somewhere where he can talk his calm, measured sense… somewhere he can tell them it is not all over, that there is still everything to play for. And he would be right to say that. Because as hard as yesterday was to take, let’s forget it for the moment, let’s move our thoughts to Swindon, and Wembley and beating Sheffield United or Yeovil Town.

As I said in my article ‘What A Season, What A Bloody Season’ last week, before the Hartlepool trip, this has been an amazing campaign, one to be proud of, one that is far from over, no matter how awful we feel right now. Chin up, deep breath….

We are the best team in this division, we are capable of some outstanding football – let’s recalibrate and go for it.

Check out these dates and be there to get behind the team, they still need our help.

Dave Lane