Steve Fletcher – Thank You

I always knew this day would come, but it doesn’t mean I was prepared.

7,199 days ago I stepped into Dean Court for the first time – a fresh-faced 9 year old – and saw us beat Cardiff City in what was then the Coca Cola Cup. Today, as I approach my 29th birthday, I can’t comprehend that I won’t see you play in a Bournemouth shirt again.

Of course, I share so many of the memories of your career as everyone else – the thundering volley at the Millennium Stadium, your 100th league goal to keep us in the Football League, the (yes, the) hat-trick against Brentford that soothed my hangover on a rain lashed New Year’s Day and I was so overwhelmed by, I didn’t speak for 10 minutes. Well worth the 480 game wait.

For me, however, there are so many more reasons you’ll be missed. Memories that will live with me forever.

You and Mel calling the entire squad over to sign a football for me after training, as a shy, speccy schoolboy too afraid to ask, then stopping for 5 minutes to have a chat, giving me a Mars bar and telling me I’d picked the right club. 

The bullet header at Torquay in 2004, seconds after one of the travelling support yelled “get him off O’Driscoll, he’s past it”, causing me (and those around me) to scream objections back at him as the net rippled.

All the nearly hat-tricks, most notably against Swindon in 2000 when, having scored 2 in the first 25 minutes, you fizzed a 30 yard volley what seemed like millimetres over the bar.

There are too many flick-ons, knock downs and glorious misses to recount, let alone your dogged clearances and your spell as a centre half in the Great Escape season, but it’s not the individual moments that made you Mr Bournemouth – it’s everything.

You may be a great big Northern lump, but you’re ours, whether you’re on the payroll or not. 

Thanks for the memories Big ‘Un.