Evening all

This is a message i have been meaning to write for a long time. And a thank you which is long overdue. As a fan of the game from over in England i have watched the sport from afar for a many moons. The first super bowl i can recall was the titans and the rams and down the years i picked and chose my teams depending on which game i was able to watch on any specific sunday. 

When however the jaguars decided they would give us a game over here i decided i would have to nail my colours to the mast. If the jags could sacrifice a game a year, then there was no excuses for diving in and taking them as my team. It was a decision i made, stuck with .... And have spent years with my head in my hands ever since!!! ...

However, one of the first things i did (as I suspect many others have before me) was find this board, or to be more accurate the old one, and through many years have spent enjoyable hours lurking on the dark side of the forum, always in the shadows. I was here for sprinkles over glacis, through the shuffling shambles of the Bradley years, bolony, mediocrity, minshew (God bless his soul) and all the rest of it ... Mostly bad ... But here's the rub...

The nfl over here is parked firmly behind a paywall which I can neither afford nor am likely to alter and so I have existed in a strange hinterland of watching live on tv only the London game a year and existing on a thin diet of highlights and video shorts for the rest. Come Sundays evening i take myself off quietly to room and spend each game living vicariously through a strange mix of the forum game thread and espns game tracker, switching madly between the two and watching the arrows and avatars march up and down the field ... 

And as such you guys have become my link to the jags. I find myself living and dying with your posts and updates especially on gameday... I have no other way. The board has effectively become my way of keeping up with the team. Down the years i have enjoyed reading bullseyes carefully crafted posts, nyc4 and homebiscuits well reasoned arguments, wondered at the meaning of life (that was jdub), marvelled at snowies predictions (i hope you enjoyed the tacks game with your dad big man), wondered a million times if it was worth a bet on 42-10, spat with rage  as the first 'game over' posts come through on the gameday thread (3-0 down, 14:20 usually left in the first) ... And then watched depressed knowing it was likely true, wondered if I should have supported the chiefs when the draft threads started in november, watched bchbunnie and americus fighting a rearguard action for the lassies, and enjoyed it all ... Despite the losses...

And then a strange thing happened, this year we began to win (aye we had a few in 2017 ... But I spent most of that year wondering who would blow the season up first, my money quite wrongly being on Darius getting busted for a third time) ... And so we came to this week and the titans and I found myself wanting the team to win, not just as a fan, not just for the players ... But mostly for you guys. I have a 'football' team over here who for many years were the living embodiment of the jags, the losses piled up, the team was badly run, small market (as you lot would say) clinging onto a threadbare existence and through it all i went to the games week in week out... We turned it round a few years ago and won a few things had some success but despite all that my favourite game was, is and probably always will be a perfectly mundane league game, but it was the 'moment' ... The moment when you realise you've turned the corner, when all the years of absolute shite were worth it ... Its a long way up the mountain, maybe the jags will get to a Lombardi maybe not I'm no fortune teller... But I wonder if years from now whatever happens, the titans won't be 'the game' and im glad for you guys,

so thanks to each and everyone of you ... You've made supporting the jaguars a better experience than it has any right to be

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