Opinion: If Hatters seal Great Escape it might just be the club’s best ever result

After the wonderful win at Hull City on Saturday afternoon to put our destiny in our own hands, it has got me thinking about how big an achievement survival would be, and where it ranks on the list of accomplishments throughout our illustrious history.

When you look back in time the obvious achievement that comes to mind is winning the Littlewoods Cup, that famous afternoon when we beat Arsenal 3-2.

But without taking anything away from that great day, or indeed beating higher opposition to win the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final, I often hear people inside the game quote that leagues carry more weight than cups.

I understand that viewpoint too. In cup competitions you are playing a series of one-off matches, often against lower league opposition if you have some luck with the draw, and although you need to hold your nerve to come through, ultimately it is a five or six game event, rather than a 46-match marathon of a league campaign.

That makes me think about the League One winning success in 2005 and last season, the Conference winning campaign as well as the great escapes of the 80s and 90s.

In saying that, I’m reluctant to go too far back in time because prior to the Premier League era, football was weighted much more on what happened on the pitch, as opposed to the present day where the biggest battles are between budgets and bank balances.

With respect, we had everything going for us in that Conference season and were one of the biggest budget holders in League One last season, so of those title wins 2005 is probably the pick of them, but even then Hull City and Tranmere Rovers were our closest challengers – hardly footballing powerhouses!

I wasn’t lucky enough to be around as a fan in 1983 when we won at Man City to pull off the seemingly impossible, but as I say football was more about the actual football back then, as it was when we beat Derby County on the last day in 1990 and 1991 to stay up.

They were all wonderful and significant achievements, but if we survive on Wednesday I think it might well surpass all of them. I say that because of what we’ve been up against and what we’ve had to endure.

We’ve had to take on some of the biggest clubs in the country in the form of Leeds United, West Bromwich Albion and Nottingham Forest among others, while plenty more are queuing up to get themselves into financial difficulty chasing the Premier League dream.

If that wasn’t enough, we’ve had to go through a global pandemic which has crippled the world financially, and we shouldn’t forget that before a ball was kicked arguably our two more important players left to join top flight clubs.

It isn’t for me to say definitively whether staying up will be our best ever achievement, but given the meaning of it, financially, as well as the difficulty of it, it has to be high up on the list.