IT HAS been a tense few days at Hurworth as men with clipboards have examined every aspect of the club's innards as part of the tough grading in Boro's bid for Category One status under the new national Academy set-up.

The box-ticking exercise could be the most significant action of the summer as far as Boro's long term footballing strategy is concerned.

WITH the play-offs looming I'll jettison journalistic objectivity and pin my colours to the mast... I want West Ham to get battered at Wembley. I want the bloated Bubble Blowers to be humiliated, to stagger through a summer of crisis, axe arch pragmatist Fat Sam in an ugly mud-slinging spat, try and fail to clear out the media darling's big earners in a chaotic fire sale, implode and get dragged down another level into a fractured Leeds-style perma-crisis dogged by terrace in-fighting, a backlash against the board and political paralysis over the Olympic Stadium. I know, I know. Get off the fence, Vickers.

RIGHT, Boro bloggerati, I'm looking for you as Teesside's most erudite and best informed focus group to do my job for me, or crowd-sourcing as we call it in new journalism.

I'm looking to turn the spotlight on Boro's Unsung Heroes with a series of profiles over the summer and given your collective knowledge spanning generations of fandom I want you to help me whittle down a long list into a final squad.

You will need to be able to weigh up the contributions of those long over-shadowed by the star strikers and big signings to put in a solid shift of week in, week out unfussy reliability; to compare the abilities of rivals across the eras; and to be ruthless enough to strike out the claims of the stalwarts who don't quite make it. And it'll give you something to focus on while you are going through Boro cold turkey too.

Are you up for the challenge?

IT WAS A disappointing but fitting end to the season. When chances presented themselves Boro could not score. They had a good first half but faded in their second and when the pressure and stakes rose in the final stages they lost their shape, their composure and their way. When they were on top they could not score. Then when they were chasing the game they were caught napping.

GO ON then.... give me your apocalyptic 'typical Boro' D-Day double decider scenario. There's literally hundreds of possible permutations of calamitous cock-ups, creative chipped shoulder conspiracies and poor innocent victim of the shifting sands of football fate to chose from. Here's mine:

TYPICAL Boro! Leave it until the last game of the season to deliver a fiesty explosion of hope and excitement after a season of home-o-phobic freezing and frustration why don't you? Twist the knife and shatter our dreams against Doncaster and dump morale on rock bottom before delivering the performance of the season when all seems lost. What a cruel and perverse team, torturing us and dragging out the agony.

As usual Boro, the team through the Looking Glass, do everything the wrong way round. Stumble to relegated Rovers after failing to deal with the expectations of being favourites, then when it all looks hopeless, take apart the rampant side that battered Boro down at their place and who were coming here as a formality. As at Cardiff last term, we are at our best as party poppers when we are underdogs.

And on telly too. Fantastic. Mission Impossible is back on. I'm still buzzing.

CAN Boro still do it? What do you think? Four points adrift, two to play, rampant Rugby League-alikes Southampton up next to play a demoralised and toothless Boro who can't score past a team who have shipped 77 goals this season and who are one paced and one dimensional at home, live on TV and with the season possibly terminated before kick-off. In front of a cynical and seething crowd who are looking for scapegoats and even starting to chunter at the manager. I'm not really selling it to you am I?

We needed to tear into them from the off, crush them ruthlessly and show we had the bloody killer instinct with a display that would win over a far from convinced Riverside crowd and launch a do-or-die final assault. Instead we got a meek and flaccid display that lacked not just creative

CURTIS Main's Derby Rams raid could be the spark that ignites an explosive final flourish to a stuttering season.

Certainly, if Boro now manage to claw back into the play-off shake-off in the last three games, Main's electric strike will go down in terrace folk-lore as the Roy of the Rovers moment that revived a flagging campaign.

THE ANNUAL Riverside fashion shoot took place this week. The players reckoned most likely to be still here next year and so eligible for the catalogue picture but least likely to annoy the punters because of their performances, injury record or reputed wages - that Venn diagram sub-set is maybe LukeyJuke, Bennttinho and the Dormo Destroyer plus Steeley for the keeper's kit - modelled the trendy new look Boro shirts for next season. Okay, it's not Mrs Karembeu but that's where we are as a club these days.

My guess is that the home kit will be predominantly red with some prominent white fashion feature currently available on an Adidas template and that has a little bit of an echo of our historic Above Average White Band. Or possibly a yoke. Or epulettees. Or lightning flash. You know the drill. And I'm guessing the away kit will be something that isn't black.

While we are waiting for the traditional well sourced leak from a bloke who knows a players' brother, the grainy badly lit phone camera snatch picture and the series of mock-ups of mooted merchandise sponsored by Cleveland Cable, Virgin or Irn Bru, here's something to play with - and one I did earlier.

BORO went from heroes to zeroes in a damaging defeat at Hull.

From a commanding position they let a limited side on a nightmare run - in this case five defeats on the spin - wriggle off the hook. They lost their fluidity, their shape, their focus and gifted a goal to let Hull back in it then naturally, we all know the script, were caught cold with a sickening late strike. Which has been the story of a frustrating season.

They took zero points in a pivotal pair of play-off battles with fellow outside promotion pretenders over the crucial Easter weekend.

They have a damning zero goal difference after the familiar flaws at both ends reared their heads to add up to flat-lining stats.

And, to judge by the heavy post match sigh of resignation on the Teesside street, they are now seen as having zero chance of extending a wilting season into May.