Former BBC Wiltshire match commentator Vic Morgan returns for the 2016/17 season…

And so it begins again.

With Test Matches and the Summer Olympics underway, here we are talking about the start of a new domestic football season.

After the failure of England’s megastars in the European Championship, albeit tempered by the success of the Welsh (especially if you can claim heritage from that nation), you might think football has reached a bit of a nadir. Also, depending on what you read, Swindon Town are apparently about to embark on a season of unparalleled failure.

Many fans are basing their lack of excitement over the new campaign on the lack of new players arriving at the County Ground. We’ve also lost the provider of twenty plus goals from last term, Nicky Ajose deciding to decamp to South London and the how green is the Valley of Charlton Athletic. Adding to the general feeling of apparent apathy is the ever-growing list of injuries depleting an already thin squad.

So is it as bad as it seems? Let’s get one thing straight. I can moan for England. If you want someone to be overly pessimistic about my football team, I’m your man. Believe me I can turn a six-nil win into a nightmare scenario. Therefore you might expect me to go overboard about the lack of exciting names flooding into North Wiltshire.

There’s a school of thought and I wouldn’t disagree with it, that the basis of your team should be in place before the season starts. However, we still have time before the end of August deadline to sort things out. Premier League clubs will start loaning out players once they’ve named their main squads and who knows who we might get then. The lack of emergency loans this season will, perhaps, make this more urgent.

I’m not panicking and I don’t intend too. To be honest I don’t have the money to buy out Lee Power and take control of Swindon Town, so I have to trust him to do the right thing. That is to run the club in a way that means it’ll be here in five, ten, fifty years time. Until such times an owner comes in ready to splash the cash then Mr Power runs the Town. Don’t forget we had a rich owner relatively recently and when he pulled out it nearly brought the club to its knees.

I can hear you now. “What rubbish, we should be challenging for a place in the Championship, a club of our size”. Okay, I don’t doubt that a tilt at the second tier shouldn’t be beyond us. It’s not that long ago we were in the Premier League. Mind you I would argue that it took us years to financially recover from that.

I would say this. No matter what I’ll be there supporting Swindon Town. It’s my club and it always will be. It starts again for me on Saturday and it ends next May. It’s the way it is and always will be.

My final few words ahead of the new season is on the passing of Dave Syrett. Dave was a top Town forward in the Seventies and someone who was a bit of a hero of mine. He became a friend and was a lovely, honest man. There’ll be many of us thinking of you at three o’clock on Saturday Dave, we’ll miss you.

Keep it loud keep it proud keep it SWINDON!