From Despair to Delirium

This book began as a series of blog posts, each post based on the most recent Carlisle United match. It charts the club's decline in the 2021-2022 season to a point in February 2022 when the club found itself in the League Two relegation zone. The return of Carlisle-born former manager Paul Simpson saw the club embark on a dramatic revival which resulted in Carlisle United comfortably avoiding relegation. The author was present at many of those games that ensured the team's climb to safety. Following retirement in July 2022, the author was in a position to buy season tickets for himself and his son, meaning that they were able to attend about 75% of the club's games in the 2022-2023 season, clocking up well over 7,000 miles in the process. in addition to the physical journey, It was a remarkable metaphorical journey for the club. Mild expectation grew into optimism, grew into ambition, grew into expectation, before the remarkable denouement that saw Carlisle win an unlikely promotion to League One in the most dramatic fashion, via a penalty shoot-out in the play-off final at Wembley. This book recounts that two-season journey blow-by-blow, each post written within two or three days of the relevant game and not revised with the benefit of hindsight. It is an essential read for any supporter of Carlisle United, but will also resonate with any supporter of a lower-league football club who has endured years (sometimes decades) of disappointment, despair and frustration before achieving that brief, but precious, moment in the sun.

Howard Falshaw saw his first Carlisle United game in 1967, and has now supported the club for fifty-six years. His retirement in 2022, after forty-one years as an English Teacher, afforded him the opportunity to become a season-ticket holder for the first time, even though this required a 270-mile round trip from Wakefield. What a season he chose! He had already been writing a regular blog after each game for the previous season, and began to entertain the possibility of his accounts being published in book form. When he found a publisher towards the end of 2022, he had no way of knowing the events that would follow, providing his narrative with the perfect happy ending.