AS TONY Blair once said: "This is not a time for soundbites. The hand of history is resting on our shoulders."
Victory tonight will set up a mind-blowing big match blur of three semi-final showdown's in eight action packed days. Semi-finals. Three of them. In eight days. That is just staggering. This club is now unrecognisable from the makeweight no-marks most of us learned to laugh at and barrack mercilessly from the Holgate.
And what if we win? Not just the semi-finals but one of the cups? Or both? How will Teesside's dedicated army of perennial pessimists cope? And will their tendency to gloom stop them enjoying our moment of glory?
It is time for Boro fans to rewire themselves for success.
At times it seems there is a Chickenrunner deep in all of us. A wobble, a set-back, a defeat to the Barcode Billwatchers and the ancient repressed anger bubbles to the surface. It doesn't take much to spark the 'typical Boro, always let you down' mantra and unleash our innate sennse of impending inevitable failure.
The 'typical Boro' merchants have long held sway. They once controlled the terraces with a kind of footballing Inquisition. Any outbreaks of dangerous optimism within the crowd, any small currents of naive ra-ra belief in a better future or youthful hope and joy were soon stamped out by a combination of harsh reality and a zealous self appointed boo boy militia who set to to work with the ruthless zeal of the Stasi.
Daring to dream had you marked out as something alien and subversive and attracted a stream of bile that not only questioned your sanity but also your supporting credentials. "Ha, the poor deluded fool thinks we are going to win it! He can't be a real Boro fan. Doesn't he know they alway let you down?"
That pessimists - or "realists" as they dubbed themselves - have made finding the downside in any situation into an art form. To be fair, over the years that has given us great comfort and the gallows humour kept us, if not happy, certainly sane on the way back from yet another Wembley defeat. That Boro were historically doomed to failure for reasons beyond control was a comprehensive if bleak world view that was hard to argue against. You certainly didn't have much evidence to marshall against it.
So we got used to donning the armour of cynicism whenever big games loomed. There was no point getting your hopes up for Man City, Orient, Wolves, Leicester, Chelsea, Chelsea or Chelsea. Yes, you were going to get kicked in the teeth by fate but it would be foolish to smile and present a better target.
But that all changed at Cardiff. Not immediately admittedly. On the way back from the Millenium Stadium the backspin started at the first service station. "Anyone can win the League Cup. We've only beat Arsenal reserves and Bolton. And they should have had a penalty. It's only papering over the cracks."
And it is easy to take the shine off the League Cup. It IS the secondary knockout. Swindon, Birmingham, West Brom, Oxford, Stoke and Norwich have won it. All the big boys.
But what about the FA Cup? That is the trophy we dreamed of as kids. And what about the UEFA Cup? Would winning that only be papering over the cracks of a bottom half league season? Are you MAD? That is a trophy that has been lifted by Real Madrid, Ajax, Juventus, Inter, Bayern, Liverpool... now that is a list to be part of.
Winning either would a watershed moment without parallel. It would show that Cardiff was not a once in a lifetime fluke. It would shatter the old pessimistic preconceptions and allow us to redraw our horizons.
The tide of history has changed for this club: a new home, a new direction, fantastic training facilities, a productive youth factory, a first trophy, a successful foray into Europe... who knows what can happen after tonight and after this month. This is without doubt a Golden Age. Let's cast off the strait jacket of the Chickenrun and enjoy it.
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