My first ever Town match was in the McMenemy era, but I was five years old and oblivious to the miraculous transformation he had performed on the club, so I spent the game watching the crowd.

I’d like to say I vividly remember my first real game, but I have no idea what the date was, who we were playing or what the result was. However by the time my first footballing hero Kevin DrinkelI scored a hat-trick against Sheffield United on the last day of the 1979/80 season, I was an Imperial corner regular and about to acquire my first junior season ticket for the princely sum of fifteen quid.

The first half of the eighties saw my team flirt with both top flight football and relegation and win the Football League Group Cup, whilst I picked up some good O’Level results and some less impressive ones at A’Level and left school not knowing what the hell I was going to do with my life.

I was in good company when Mike Lyons came along and didn’t seem to know what he was doing either once Terry Darracott had left him to fend for himself. After twelve months of doing very little, I reluctantly went to college and as my first year there was drawing to a close, so too was the Mariners’ stay in the old Division Two.

At that point, it would have been easy to give up on Town. We were rubbish, relegated, our best players had either been sold off or allowed to leave and there was no money to replace them. What was there to make me stay?

The answer was nothing, apart from blind loyalty, a desire to martyr myself to a seemingly hopeless cause and, perhaps most of all, a need to have something in my life that really mattered. So, armed with a student grant, I made the ridiculous decision to not only renew my season ticket, but to start going to some away games as well.

My first was a pre-season friendly at Scunthorpe but fortunately the Old Showground failed to put me off. Neither did a 1-0 defeat, largely obscured by a sizeable fence, at Belle Vue on the opening day of the season.  I was hooked.

It wasn’t the football. That was still fairly poor and it was clear we were going to struggle that season. It was the camaraderie, the new circle of friends and the welcome onset of a busy social life. Through travelling with the supporters club, I ended up joining its committee, playing (usually badly) for its pool and dominoes teams and getting involved with its Sunday League football team. The isolation I’d felt after leaving school was well and truly over.

Over the next nineteen years, I missed only two away games and experienced huge highs and equally sizeable lows. My life revolved around the fixture list and victories, defeats, promotions and relegations all determined whether friends and work colleagues felt safe approaching me or kept their distance.

Whilst I remained a seemingly permanent fixture on the supporters club coach, friends and social activities came and went. The supporters club teams all disbanded, but were replaced by post match pizza and evenings in the pub, writing for and editing the Sing When We’re Fishing fanzine and then, in late 2002, by GTST.

2002 was a year of change for me. My father had died and I’d been made redundant after almost eight years working in a fairly closeted environment and was suddenly seeing more of the world (well Grimsby and Cleethorpes) doing the rounds as an office temp. I’d also begun to realise that it was no longer enough to just think as far ahead as the next match and that the club’s long-term future was a greater cause for concern.    

I’d like to say I joined the Trust and immediately found my place in the world, but the reality is that I felt like a fish out of water at the first working party meeting. It seemed like the other people there had everything covered. I wanted to do something, but a lack of confidence meant I felt intimidated and thought I couldn’t possibly be of use.

Eventually though, I found my niche as Trust editor, began to make friends and to believe in and enjoy what we were trying to do. As an individual I could never make a difference, but as part of the Trust I could. To quote the great Bard (of Barking), there is power in a union and that is a Trust’s strength. At board level it means a pooling of resources, skills, opinions and ideas and at member level it gives the fans the opportunity to present a united front, both in their support of the club they love and in their expectation that the club should be accountable to its supporters.

Whilst I stopped going to away games after the Cardiff play-off defeat, I still love the club and I’m still committed to the Trust. We’ve had successes and failures, joys and frustrations in our seven years of existence and we’re one of those slow burn Trusts that hasn’t quite taken off, but we have made a difference, even if it’s only in a small way.

Rachel Branson – GTST Board Member