A Glorious Victorious day

Sorry if I have stayed quiet the last few days. It has been a mixture of excitement, nervousness, frustration, elation and altogether madness.

The day of the big game came and I couldn't sleep so I was up early tidying up and pottering round. I stopped to look at my emails and see what others (that weren't lucky enough to go) were doing to pass the time. Then I got up washed the pots and did a bit more tidying and sat down and read a few more emails.
This continued until it was time to put the food in. OK so it was just me and DD in for the game but I thought that as we get more nervous, it would be a good idea to have food at hand to keep our hands busy. I opted for Pizza and Wedges as they are great finger food, not fussy to prepare and they can be warmed up later if they don't get eaten (Or eaten cold for breakfast as in the pizza)
All the time I had on Radio Derby, building us up to a frenzy while they were interviewing the lucky ticket holders on Wembley way in the rain.

At 2pm with an hour to go I could hardly stand it. I put Sky Sports on with the TV on mute and carried on listening to the build up from Ross and Ted on RD.

I think I had eaten half a pizza and half the plate of wedges by the time 3pm came. I had a lump in my throat already as the Bright brothers lead out the team.
We thought we would try to watch the TV and listen to the commentary on the radio but a few seconds in and the delay was too obvious for us to continue so we had to say ta-ra to Ross and Ted til half time.

I could hardly watch as the first half unfolded. It was full of incident and exciting football.
Half time loomed and it was nil nil and still all to play for.
I was absolutely dying for the loo so what a relief when the whistle went. We switched the radio back on to hear the half time chat on RD.

The whole of the second half is a complete blur until the hour mark when this happened




Me and DD went absolutely mad. I did my patented high pitched squeal and both the kids were jumping around the room all 3 of us singing Come on Derby and all the other top Rams tunes. My heart was beating like mad and I was sweating and shivering and shaking. I couldn't bare it as the next 34 minutes went by in ultra slow motion.

Finally as the Baggies took a dangerous corner the ref blew his whistle and everybody went absolutely mental.

Derby had actually gone and done it - We are back in the premiership after all these horrible years of being in the grotty Championship. On screen we could see the players and all the coaching team going mad on the pitch. I turned on the radio again to listen to Colin Gibson as he could hardly speak through being choked up and emotional.

It was so amazing I didn't actually know what to do. I was stunned into silence for the next few hours. It all seemed too unreal. Well I guess that's Derby County for you. They take you on a massive Roller Coaster ride right up to the very last second. What choked me up though was actually seeing how the players were all so happy and excited. Stephen Bywater in particular (Derby Supergoalie) was acting very strangely by jumping on people being interviewed pulling strange faces and roaring.

The worst bit of the game was about 88 minutes, Seth collapsed as his knees just gave up on him. One of the WBA players berated him for time wasting but Seth was in pain and had to go off. This seemed to be the actual first time that Billy was going to leave him on till the end but obviously he just couldn't make it and had to limp off the pitch but as always he got a rousing send off.

We watched as the players mounted the stairs up to the royal box. It was wonderful to see Club captain Michael Johnson holding aloft the cup aside team captain Matt Oakley.
The cup means nothing really though as it is all about The Premiership and the £60 million.