I struggle a little to watch highlights from the play-off win.

I went to Wembley with my younger brother, his soon to be wife and my son who was seven at the time. It was the most incredible, unforgettable day, full of memories that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

It was also the last game I ever went to with my brother. He was diagnosed with bowel cancer a few months later, and died in December the following year at the age of 39.

I look at the photos we took that day and it’s almost unbearable. When I see the goals on video, I see them again from our point of view and how we felt. The f**king JOY of it all!

Michael was a translator who worked at the European Parliament and an occasional wrather who would pop up here as ‘Maly Mlyn’' - often when there was some urgent translation business to be done about Dave Strihavka or Timm Klose or a possible signing.

When he died, his bosses wrote to my Mum and Dad and said he was one of the best they had ever worked with, from any nation. And most incredibly, he achieved all this while somehow being related to me.

Please do forgive this extraordinary self-indulgence, and gear change. Just needed to share. But I suppose, by writing this down (somewhat impulsively... well, that's me), this is as also much about the quiet, real lives led by wrathers that we often know very little about, as it is about me and my brother.

OTBC

PS Wrathers who were very kind at the time know who they are x

Posted By: norwaay, May 25, 10:19:26