I'd like to take the opportunity of my final Weekly News column to take a look at what has been an eventful season for the football club that is closest to my heart.

A general appraisal of the season brings up more lows than highs than lows, with the major headlines coming from off-field incidents rather than footballing performances.

With new manager mark Ward installed, we started off with high hopes of a quick return to Conference football and took the field for the opening games with what was a very young Alty side.

It soon became clear that we were going to try to succeed by playing football on the deck with a good passing game but many fans thought at times we were guilty of playing too much football which, as most of us will know, does not always get you results in the UniBond.

A major blow came in the FA Cup when we played North west Counties side Mossley at Moss Lane.

It seemed that someone had forgotten to tell the player how important the FA Cup is to our club because we just did not perform and were well beaten  3-0 by a side two Divisions below us.

The remainder of the season seemed to come like one historic event after another,

The halfway stage saw us in deep financial crisis and breaking point appeared to be reached in January of this year.

That was when former chairman Gerry Berman stepped down for the good of the club, and allowed a business consortium to take control of the club.

After that Kevin Ellison went to to Leicester - bringing some much needed cash into the club and then we were hit by another bombshell.

The new look board at Moss Lane had sacked mark ward and appointed Bernard Taylor and Graham Taylor as caretakers until the end of the season.

They were then given the job on a permanent basis  prior to the last game of the season at Hucknall and the club to an impressive 7th place finish.

As far as the supporters are concerned it has to go down as one of the most traumatic sessions for many a long time.

However the support throughout the season has been a credit and the major bonus coming out of all this is that Altrincham Football club is still around and with the knowledge that there are now many people involved in this football club who really love the place, I can only see a brighter future on the horizon.

I sign off hoping that my reports have given you some insight on what life is all about being an Alty fan and hopefully they may have given some people a renewed interest in their local town football club.

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