​Miracle in the Midlands: How Northampton Town Caught Shaq's Attention
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​Miracle in the Midlands: How Northampton Town Caught Shaq's Attention

Back from the brink of extinction, League Two side Northampton Town have enjoyed an incredible season that saw them become the first club in the Football League to clinch their title – and the only one to catch the attention of Shaquille O'Neal.

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

Here are some things that I've started doing in the past couple of months: mentally drafting and re-drafting a chant to appropriately celebrate Northampton Town's Ricky Holmes; joining a variety of Facebook pages and fan forums to try to locate an away shirt for my girlfriend, whose surname is also Holmes, a fact that has me soppily stricken by the coincidence of the universe; and suddenly yelling "Shoe Army" at inappropriate volume. When I first heard it, in the Dave Bowen Stand behind the goal at Sixfields Stadium, I thought that it was "Jew Army", which seemed strange and improbable. Then, as a metropolitan sort used to a classier kind of takeaway, I thought it might be "Shawarma", which seemed even more unlikely. Eventually I twigged that this was the rallying cry of the Cobblers, and I've been shouting it ever since.

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I'm a glory-supporter of a League Two side. Back when I was a kid in the '90s and wanted to know every single detail about football, I was very aware of the Cobblers, my local team. I had the last-minute winner John Frain scored against Swansea in the 1997 Division Three Playoff Final taped off Anglia News. Against any accusations of being an arriviste, I have blurted out to random Cobblers fans that I was actually at Wembley the following year, when we lost 1-0 to Grimsby in the Division Two Playoff Final. I have a clear memory of our 'keeper, Andy Woodman, saving a last-minute penalty, and the Cobblers fans doing their best to tell the Grimsby support that they were not singing anymore. They definitely were.

My interest waned, to the point that when I attended my first match this time around, a 3-0 win over Barnet on January 2nd, I didn't know a single name on the teamsheet. What brought me back? The Cobblers were winning. They've been winning in an unconscionable way. Purely in football terms, since October 17th last year they've lost once. From December 28th they won 10 in a row. My favourite during that run was a trip to Leyton Orient, relegated last season and considered, at least ostensibly, to be one of the contenders in the promotion race. The Cobblers won 4-0, including an overhead kick from a centre-back and the League 2 Goal of the Month from Ricky Holmes, who in my mind is a combination of David Beckham, Luis Figo, and someone inspiring like Denzel Washington. They were the first team in the Football League to clinch their title and, ahead of this weekend's final fixture, enjoy a 12-point cushion atop the table.

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They are, in a pretty unarguable way, the best team in the country.

Holmes strokes home a penalty against Notts County // PA Images

But that doesn't begin to describe how special a season this is. If the Cobblers penetrated your conscious in the past year, beyond football matters, it would be because in October the club was issued with a winding-up order by HRMC, the result of unpaid liabilities on a £10million loan from the council to develop their Sixfields ground and the land around it. A loan that the council was also demanding swift repayment of, and which is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Here are some facts regarding that loan from which you can draw your own conclusions. Of the £8.75million transferred to 1st Land Ltd (owned by one Howard Grossman) to carry out the development, £2million was kindly passed to the father of Cobblers chairman David Cardoza; £1million was paid in 'consultancy fees' to three gentlemen, one of whom is called Marcus Grossman; £600,000 was earmarked to rebuild David Cardoza's house; £314,000 was given to Howard Grossman as a 'fee'; and £233,000 was diverted to County Cemetery Services Ltd, which includes among its directors David Cardoza and Marcus Grossman. Taxpayers money at the time, lest we forget. The BBC also discovered that a contribution of £10,000 was paid by parties linked to the Grossmans into the election fund of David Mackintosh, who was leader of the council that oversaw the loan, and is now the Conservative MP for Northampton South. The contribution wasn't declared.

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A practical consequence of this was that if you looked to your left from the Dave Bowen Stand, instead of the stadium's main stand all you saw for the entire season were shanks of empty concrete, covered in tarpaulin. Understandably, given that prophesies of the club's collapse had gone from tabloidy doom to something approaching resignation in the local paper, the players could have similarly resigned themselves to being simply 'there', as players at Portsmouth and Blackpool and Bolton have been 'there' – on the pitch in shirt, if not in spirit – amid similar circumstance. To have muddled along with the odd good performance while waiting to know if they actually still had a job – the average salary in League Two is about 40k – would be more than enough. To have, off the back of all of this, the best season in the club's history, complete with set-piece routines so exquisite they get attention from America, 10-game winning streaks and Shaquille O'Neal wishing the Cobblers all the best, is something that can only be filed in that magic box, 'football logic'. Throw in the fact that the season before last they escaped relegation to the Conference on the final day – and given what followed that would likely have been the end of the club – and even football logic stretches.

Fantasy is, of course, underpinned by reality. That reality came in the shape of new owner Kelvin Thomas, erstwhile proprietor of Oxford Utd (where, by happy coincidence, he and current Cobblers manager Chris Wilder had succeeded in taking a club in similar financial jeopardy from the doldrums of the Conference back into the professional leagues). Thomas formally took over the club and all its difficulties in late November – and has thus only seen them lose once as owner. At the time of his takeover the Cobblers were already unbeaten in six; you probably can't underestimate the energising value of a new owner coming in and the manager knowing, for sure, that he likes what you're doing. When I asked Thomas, he said of his relationship with Chris Wilder, "When you achieve success it creates a bond, a trust. We trust each other, in terms of each other's roles. He knows I'll get things done – he trusts my opinion. Trust is such an important part."

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Cobblers boss Chris Wilder celebrates with players David Buchanan (right) and Marc Richards // PA Images

He also mentioned the value of "being able to show that everyone's in this together". But I wonder if – in a way that was probably quite unpleasant for the players at the time – that particular magic had already blessed the team before his arrival. In October, it was reported that the players had gone unpaid, as the club's accounts had been frozen. Team spirit at the upper reaches of football's money mountain, as Chelsea have so nobly demonstrated this year, is pretty thin in the air. I'd bet my house, and your house, on PSG never winning the Champions League, simply because when the guy you're looking at is only and entirely there for the money, it's hard to make a heartfelt connection with him to carry you through the battles. But in all the Cobblers games I've watched this season, they play like they understand something about mutual sacrifice. It's not hard to sense the root of that.

Enough of the misty-eyed romance. James Averill, of the Northampton Town Supporters Trust, while recognising that "the collective spirit helped to propel us", had a predictably more informed line of reasoning. The club has brought in players with experience of promotion – and, it must be mentioned, snapped up one of the Leicester City trio caught being racist on camera in Thailand – and have a manager "who can vary how we play; sometimes managers are very stubborn. We can play good, expansive football; we can grind out a win when we need to." That, Averill recognised, puts the Cobblers basically in a class of one in a league where you're usually either a grinder with no class or all-flair-no-trousers. The table backs him up on this.

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So: sensible practicalities, a smooth relationship between owner and manager, and an X-factor dose of serious adversity overcome would seem to be the necessary blend to have a season where you break your club record for the most consecutive wins and finish as champions with games and games to spare.

It would be a lie to say I'm still a Cobblers supporter out of glory-hunting. The truth is, I'm really not that fond of the town itself; it's standard somewhat-bereft small-town England, a load of Poundstretchers and too many casinos and a will on Friday night to get far too drunk and forget the customer contact centre you work in. I'm leaving here soon; and I take to heart the Oasis line, to not look back in anger. Before my first trip back to Sixfields, I had absolutely nothing about the town to think of with any true fondness. Now, after being among people who felt their team needed them in a way I feel inevitably dissipates the higher up the leagues you get, it makes me happy that wherever I go in the world, when people ask who I support, I'll be able to name a team that will make them ask – at least for the time being – "who?"

On that note, the last word goes to James Averill, when I put to him whether the season Leicester have had or that the Cobblers have had counts as the bigger deal. "Leicester's is the bigger achievement. Ours is the better story." And the last, last word to Kelvin Thomas: "There is no ceiling in football anymore."

What a time to be alive.

@TobySprigings