Tuesday 25th April 2000 : The U's ARE saying up!

There was the unusual scene of celebrations on all four sides of the ground yesterday as Preston celebrated the championship and Cambridge United celebrated the Division Two survival that looked out of reach just a couple of months ago.

Unlike last season's finale - when promotion celebrations were made bitter by the last day loss of the title to Brentford on our own pitch - this time there was no swallowed down disappointment, just the sheer joy of knowing that Cambridge United have survived on the slimmest of budgets to plan for another season in this division.

Only if the U's lose the last two games and Oxford win theirs by about 30 goals can we be relegated now, with our vastly superior goal difference worth an extra point now.

Roy McFarland told the Cambridge Evening News, "Strange things do happen in football, but not that strange. I think we can say we've won the relegation battle.

"There was a great response from the team after we played badly and lost at Colchester on Saturday, and it was a tremendous all-round performance over the last few months to get ourselves into a position where we are safe with two games still to go.

"We were on the bottom, results were going against us, we'd had to sell our top scorer Martin Butler and we had injury problems. But we stuck together and worked very hard to get out of trouble. In Paul Wanless, John Taylor, Scott Eustace, and then Lionel Perez, we had a hard-core of experience which was very important.

"We didn't play our best football for much of the time against Preston, but there was a lot of character, we weren't going to be beaten, and we always looked like getting goals. Now in these last two matches we can probably have a look at one or two things with next season in mind. We know we have to strengthen the squad. The experience of this season has confirmed that, and we'll be working on it, although our financial position always makes it more difficult than for a lot of other clubs."

Club skipper Paul Wanless echoed the manager's sentiments on what was also a very special day on a personal front. From the end of January he put in several towering performances despite knowing that his prematurely born daughter Emily was very ill in the Special Care baby Unit at Hinchingbrooke Hospital.

"Most people had written us off, but we did what we said we had to do, hit promotion form to get out of trouble," he told the CEN. "We knew Preston could play good football, but we made sure they only did it across the front of us where it wasn't doing any harm.

"It's a very special day for me. We are staying in Division Two, and my daughter Emily was here, after winning her own battle, to see us beat the champions."

Before kick-off Paul and his wife Catherine brought baby Emily onto the pitch to help present a cheque for £2,000, raised by the efforts of several groups of fans, to the SCBU at Hinchingbrooke. There will be more to follow, with the club's PR Manager Graham Eales co-ordinating bids for several items of rare memorabilia, and there will be further details on this site tomorrow.

Preston boss David Moyes, a former U's player, called yesterday his "best day in football" and added, "I hope we never see the Second Division again."

Preston leave the bottom divisions behind for the first time in 19 years, and Moyes told the Lancashire Evening Post, "We didn't play very well, and that's all we need to say about that. The game was irrelevant in the end. This was about what the team have done over 44 games so far, not one. It's what you do over the whole season that counts and these boys have won 26 of those and lost only seven.

"That is a fantastic achievement and they deserve to be champions. I'm delighted for the fans because they have been brilliant all season. The ones who went to Cambridge had to watch a poor Preston performance, but the celebrations at the end will hopefully have made it all worthwhile. Let's all enjoy the moment. This is what we set out at the start of the season hoping to achieve and, so far, it doesn't come any better than this."

Been singing all day? A bigger achievement than promotion?
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