May is the best month of the season as clubs strive for titles, promotions and play-off spots, while some are desperately trying to avoid relegation. And when this goes down to the last day of the campaign it just doesn’t get any better for a reporter.
The need to keep one eye on your own match and the other eye on all the other relevant games, isn’t easy but it’s thrilling stuff and, as long as it’s not your ‘team’ involved, it’s great fun! Sometimes a reporter misses out on those special moments and unfortunately that was the case for me on the final day this season as I covered a match with nothing riding on it – the Championship game between Barnsley and Millwall. Even my last hope of an unlikely 25-point deduction for QPR, which would have maintained Millwall’s play-offs chances, ended just before kick off. So I completed my Sky season, which has included 53 games, with a jokey exchange with Jeff Stelling about Lazarus rising again to score the home winner. Roll on 2011/12.