Dear Carlisle United – thank you, and good luck at Wembley

Possibly feels a bit strange, this, receiving a letter. You can hardly open it, after all. You’re a football club – a thing, an entity – not a person with fingers and thumbs. Maybe someone in the office can do the honours.

But please do read it. You see, sometimes we have to put down in words what we feel and how we think. And what we feel and think, on this mighty weekend here in May, is simple and twofold.

Thank you, and good luck.

Good luck at Wembley. Good luck with the last aspects of preparation, good luck in familiarising yourselves with that vast stadium and its red seats which, on Sunday afternoon, will be filled with thousands of Cumbrian behinds.

Good luck when you walk onto the pitch and hear the roar. Good luck when, in your maroon shirts, you peer across at a rival team in blue. Good luck when Tom Nield blows his whistle and it’s 90 minutes, or 120 and/or penalties, between all the anticipation and either the sweetest ecstasy or the sharpest agony.

A day of destiny awaits the Blues at Wembley (Image: PA)

Good luck in this play-off final which, a year or so ago, not even the daftest optimist saw coming. Good luck with this beautiful, pleasant surprise of a promotion opportunity.

Good luck in the quest to make a crowd, a city, a community, very happy and proud indeed.

Good luck. And also – thank you.

Yes, thank you, even though this race isn’t done yet. There is an old saying about it being better to travel than arrive and, while victory on Sunday would certainly contest that, thank you all the same for the journey taken to this place.

“I want to live, not merely survive,” sang Sammy Davis Jr. This last year or so has seen Carlisle United make that vital journey.

The News & Star’s rallying cry for United’s promotion push (Image: News & Star)

From meagre existence, and peering over the precipice, to looking upwards, outwards, thinking of achievement rather than coping…that’s what you, Carlisle United, have become over the last 15 months.

If there is one four-letter word that carries the strongest currency with fans, it isn’t one you hear in the Paddock when a referee makes a mistake. It’s ‘hope’. So thank you, Carlisle United, for bringing that back to town.

Thank you, directors, for making the best managerial decision for a generation. Thanks for recognising, at a crunch point in club history, that Paul Simpson was very probably the best appointment you could make since United last appointed Paul Simpson.

Paul Simpson – the manager who has transformed the Blues (Image: Ben Holmes)

And thank you, needless to say, Paul David Simpson. Good heavens, thank you so very much. Carlisle, on their pre-February 2022 path, might be contemplating National League North today. Instead League One is just over the horizon, just beyond the arch.

Thank you, then, Simmo, for bringing Carlisle United home – for bringing supporters back, energy back, belief back, faith back. Thanks for causing a ripple far beyond the white boundaries of Dave Mitchell’s wonderful pitch which no other manager, let’s be honest, could have come close to achieving.

Thank you, also, to those inside those lines. Thank you, players, for turning a period of flat disarray into a season of ambition, of high-punching. Thanks for Owen Moxon, the lad from Denton Holme, the delivery driver turned midfield jewel. Thanks for Paul Huntington, the city-born defensive tower, Dixon’s Chimney in boots. Thanks for Kristian Dennis, for making all those goals look so easy when anyone who knows football knows they weren’t.

Thanks for big Tomas Holy, who hasn’t missed a minute of this league season. Thanks for Jack Armer, who hasn’t missed a game. Thanks for Callum Guy: that engine, that drive. Thanks for Jon Mellish…for being Jon Mellish.

A close-knit team and club could be in League One by Sunday afternoon (Image: Richard Parkes)

Thanks to all the others who’ve powered this season, and thanks to those who’ve added character even if fate has been cruel; thanks to you, Jamie Devitt.

Thanks to the wider operation: the staff who’ve been uplifted by the Simmo effect, and made Carlisle’s general workings feel sunnier, happier, more profitable.

Thanks for embracing the club’s legends in an overdue way. Thanks for giving supporters, young and old, a better environment.

Greatest thanks of all to those supporters themselves. The away-day hordes who’ve dominated far-off grounds. The young fans who’ve revitalised the Warwick. The home faithfuls who’ve found fresh voice and energy at old Brunton Park.

Thanks for Hartlepool away, Salford away, Doncaster at home, Crewe away, Barrow at home, Barrow away, Tranmere at home…

Fans have revitalised Brunton Park this season (Image: Ben Holmes)

Thanks for May 20, 2023. Thanks for Bradford. Thanks for every mad bit of it: the noise, the oomph, the glory, the pitch invasion (sorry, EFL), those scenes, that day…

Thanks for giving the ground its most powerful occasion many can remember. Thanks for all those memories. Thanks for taking us to Wembley. Thanks for giving us something to get behind that doesn’t just depend on blind faith.

Win or lose the final, thanks for all this.

But when 1.30pm comes and game 49 gets going and it’s there for the seizing on this golden, tantalising belter of a Bank Holiday weekend: good luck, too. The very, very best of luck to you all.

Up the Blues.

Jon