Well, what many had been predicting finally came to fruition last Sunday when we were consigned to relegation and League One for 2022.

Despite, for some, that maybe having been obvious for a while I was not of the same opinion and still went into the fixture hoping that we could have avoided it with a win.

It became very clear, very quickly that it wasn’t going to be and a very poor start to the game – when we needed the polar opposite – meant the game was effectively over after 10 minutes.

This season has been incredibly frustrating to put it mildly and Sunday was another demonstration of that.

There is no lack of effort from the players, but we just have a tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot all too often.

We still have two games to go, of course, and all the cliches are out in relation to us trying to win them both – but it is true and that has been reflected in training this week.

The support of the fans throughout this difficult season has never wavered and it is something which the club and the players are very grateful for when there have been times where it has not been easy to watch for sure. Brian McDermott made reference to it after the game on Sunday, saying that the response the players got post-match was awesome.

We, as a club, are now ready to go into rebuild mode as we already know there will be quite a lot of departures from the club. It is inevitable when a side gets relegated, but as I have alluded to before, there is a real state of flux within the whole game at the present time.

The new broadcast deal starts on January 1 2022 at a significantly reduced value from the previous five-year deal and that is having a major impact within the game from top to bottom.

Even at this stage of the season, we, and other clubs, do not know what our central distribution will be for next year and have not had a cast iron playing structure presented to us.

It is an extraordinary situation and one that is far from ideal as we look to move on.

One thing is for certain and that is that whatever funding clubs get will be vastly reduced from previous years and that will be the same for all clubs, although those in League One will feel it most. The immediate future of the game in general and for Oldham in particular is now in sharp focus and there will need to be a lot of time devoted to making sure we can survive the present situation in order to move forward.

Anyway, this Sunday sees our final home game of the season against the full-time men from Newcastle Thunder and rest assured we will be giving it our all to get that elusive win.

Thank you for your ongoing support!