The Salop Diaries

We live in the age of the extreme. The political sphere is split between left and right, and the poisonous rhetoric from both sides spills over into every facet of life – even the world of sport, as the recent World Cup bore testimony. Little old Shrewsbury Town is not exempt from this trend. Complain about the club’s malaise of recent years and you are labelled a “doom monger”. Dare to express any kind of positivity and there are plenty ready to point and call you a “happy clapper”. Yet, as we prepare to enter the 2026/27 campaign, I find myself reflecting on a phrase oft repeated by one of my Salopcast co-hosts, Ollie Warner, who likes to say that two things can be true at the same time. It is true, certainly, that Shrewsbury Town is a football club that has been on a downward trajectory over the past five years or so. I share the frustration of every supporter who wants to see new investment and new ideas come into the club and give us a fighting chance of competing in an age when m...

The events of the past two weeks have put a spring in my step. With five glorious victories in a row, Shrewsbury Town are a team reborn under Gavin Cowan. Suddenly, going to football is fun once again, and life is just that little bit brighter. In trying to make sense of it all, I find myself looking to history to see when we have previously enjoyed such a reversal of fortunes. I had to dig a long way back in my memory banks: allow me to transport you briefly to the spring of 1991. On the morning of 20 April that year, Shrewsbury sat third bottom of the Third Division (now League 1), six points from safety with just seven games to go. A second relegation in three seasons looked inevitable. That afternoon, Town would beat near neighbours Chester City 1-0. It proved the catalyst for a remarkable run of six wins in the last seven games. We finished 18 th , securing safety with a game to spare. We even went on to ruin the play-off hopes of Bournemouth – then under leadership of up-and-comi...

On 29 April 2003, Shrewsbury Town lost 3-2 at home to Carlisle United. It was the result that confirmed, beyond mathematical doubt, our relegation from the Football League. As I walked from the Riverside onto the Wakeman End to make my way out of the ground, I’m not ashamed to say I shed a few tears. I’m not an emotive man. I wish I was, but I tend to keep my feelings bottled up. My wife will tell you there weren’t even tears of joy on our wedding day. It’s just not my way. But, under the Gay Meadow lights that night, I welled up and tasted the salty tears that rolled slowly down my cheeks into my mouth. Football does this to us. Shrewsbury Town does this to us. It shouldn’t matter so much, but it does. As this agonising, wretched season goes on, as we stumble from one gut-wrenching low to the next, I find myself thinking about that night more and more. The future isn’t written yet, of course, but we can all see that abyss opening up before us, and it leaves me feeling anxious. Helples...