“O, I have suffered with those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel, who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her, dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd.”

--

As I sat despondently in the press room, traipsed home through the elements, and puzzled through the events of Saturday at my desk I kept coming back to the same feeling. Fear. For the first time, I am genuinely scared.

Swindon have played far worse over the last two-and-a-bit seasons and have been torn apart far easier than they were against Morecambe but never did that come with the accompanying sound of a nail being hammered into the coffin.

The storm created a sense of jeopardy and also a slightly epic backdrop to what was the biggest game at The Nigel Eady County Ground for an incredibly long time. What followed felt like something out of A Clockwork Orange, it was horrifying but you couldn’t look away.

It would be a lie to say that relegation has never crossed my mind before but it would also be dishonest to say that I ever thought it to be possible, much less realistic. On Saturday that changed. I found myself mentally figuring out whether Fylde was a real place or just the name of a football team and where to go on holiday so I could skip Gateshead. This is real. This is happening. Unless something changes in a big way.

League Two has always been something slightly amusing to me. I don’t remember Swindon any higher than League One but stays in the fourth tier were normally short-lived. “Being relegated from this level is basically impossible if you were not a basket case,” I thought. Well, about that.

The direction of travel has been going one way since Ellis Iandolo’s penalty soared over the bar and nearly struck me in the away end. Like Charlie Brown kicking the American Football, the feeling of things being different this time has swiftly been taken away. Things haven’t felt right since for a myriad of reasons and joy and hope everywhere seem to be being eroded.

I am contractually locked into this thing (I have checked) but it is scarier for everyone else. Part of me dies speaking to people and seeing them fall out of love with this whole thing. I had a chat with my own father over the summer, the main reason you all are subjected to me now, about whether he should renew his season ticket this year. I am sure everyone else had a similar conversation with somebody.

It can’t go on like this. One bad season can be erroneous, two bad seasons display some cracks, and three bad seasons mean that something is fundamentally flawed. We have tried data, we have tried betting on young talent, we have tried betting on old talent, we have tried hiring from within, we have tried a vaunted coach, we have tried someone who knows the level, and we have tried an experienced manager. Each one worked less than the next.

Arguably a lack of conviction to one plan might be an issue in itself but that doesn’t just happen without you having to start thinking about changing the cause rather than the solution. The way things have been being done structurally needs a firm examination to plot the way forward as swings of the bat are running out.

Rationally, this is not over. There are 29 games to go and you still only have to avoid being one of the two worst teams in this league. But it scares me that I believe we might be.