The news of the merger was met with a mixture of relief, excitement, and a healthy dose of trepidation. The players were overjoyed that the team had been saved, but the reality of our new situation was a daunting one.
We were no longer big fish in a small pond. We were about to be thrown into the shark-infested waters of the County League, a world of semi-professionalism, of hardened veterans, of teams that were bigger, stronger, and more organized than anything we had ever faced before.
Our departure from the Sunday League was sudden and, in some ways, anticlimactic. Terry Blackwood had arranged for our remaining fixtures to be forfeited, our record expunged from the official table.
The Railway Arms, as a Sunday League team, simply ceased to exist. We had finished 5th with 23 points from 18 games, a remarkable turnaround from the disaster of those first eight matches. But that chapter was closed now. We were Moss Side Athletic. And we were playing on Saturdays.
