Last Tuesday, while many of you were going through the agonies of the penalty shoot out at the City Ground, a few far-flung exiles were going through similar agonies in the Abbey Arms chat room. Mick in Australia, Ed in Italy and Jon in the USA crossed continents and time-zones to meet, talk and await the outcome, and Colin from Mildenhall had the dubious honour of logging on to break the bad news after listening on the radio.

In the aftermath of the game several generous messages were received on the U's Net message board or by e-mail from fans of clubs as diverse as Leyton Orient, Peterborough, Brentford and Halifax, Everton and Nottingham Forest. The fans of the third division clubs felt Cambridge United had "done Division Three proud", while the Forest fans said their side had been lucky to survive and a few felt that we were 'robbed'.

We all have diverse reasons why we support Cambridge United but one of the strangest reasons must belong to a young Norwegian who made contact recently. He explained that he became interested in Cambridge United five months ago after deciding to 'manage' the club in the computer game Championship Manager 2, and since then he has developed a real interest in following our season from afar. In the game he has managed the Club to European success and Alessandro Del Piero is playing well for the Mighty U's, although not quite as well as Tom Youngs! His interest is now so strong that he plans to watch United at least once this season when he visits England.

United supporters from all over the world sign the U's Net guestbook and in the last week I have been contacted by a former Abbey regular who is now working in Japan, and another fan who is exiled in the far North East of Scotland. Both use the web site to keep in touch with events at the Abbey, as do a lot of students who have recently moved away from the area to study.

The poll this week was to decide the 'Player of the Month' for October and at the time of writing it was a close run thing between Shaun Marshall and Alex Russell, with John Taylor also picking up a good share of the votes. As the voting did not close until today I will let you know the winner next time, by which time hopefully we will be celebrating another famous derby win and looking forward to the next round of the FA Cup!