The Art of Staying Up

Being a Wednesbury supporter is mostly a lesson in endurance. We have been around since 1877, which is a long time to spend in Wolverhampton. It is a history built on a specific kind of stubbornness. We call ourselves the Pikemen. It sounds aggressive, though in practice it usually manifests as a desperate, sliding challenge in the mud on a rainy Tuesday.

The club has a long-read biography already. Fifty years of history, all bound up in a book. It is a brave effort, though most of us prefer to remember the same three disasters every decade rather than read about them in a chapter.

Currently, we sit 17th in the table. We have played zero games. We have zero wins, zero draws, and zero points. Our goal difference is a perfect, shimmering zero. It is a clean slate. For a brief, shimmering window of time, we are technically undefeated.

To be fair, this is the most optimism the fanbase has felt since the late nineties. We are currently hovering in a state of theoretical competence. It is a fragile peace. We know how this goes. Eventually, a whistle will blow, someone will miss a sitter from six yards, and we will return to our natural state of moderate crisis.

There is a certain comfort in the predictability of it. The 17th position is practically a heritage site for us. We don't look for the title, nor do we particularly enjoy the thought of the drop. We just aim to occupy a space in the table where the air is thin and the expectations are nonexistent.

One for the future, they say. It is a phrase used by people who don't have to sit through ninety minutes of a 0-0 draw in the wind. But that is the point. We are still here. We have survived since the Victorian era through a mixture of sheer will and a refusal to acknowledge the obvious.

The season hasn't actually started yet. We are still flawless. It is a lovely feeling, while it lasts.