Yes, yes we are.
It still hasn't really hit me yet, I keep getting flashes where I realise what happened but I think my brains trying to stop it because its so insane. Blackpool, the small town with no money, are in the richest and best league in the world. It's just insane. Even writing that doesn't seem real to me, I can't explain what it feels like right now.
They say the best days of your life are the one's that start off like any other day. Well that was proved wrong yesterday.
On the motorway down on the morning of the match it was a sea of tangerine coming out of Blackpool, people honking and cheering to each other in bewilderment that we were about to play in the richest game in club football. When we got to London we headed off to a pub where Blackpool fans had planned on meeting before the game and I've never seen anything quite like it, 2000-3000 people stood around clad in tangerine. Once we'd had a couple to calm the nerves we headed down to Wembley and the nerves really started kicking in, I don't think anyone really wanted it to start, our dreams could last just a few more minutes.
The match itself nearly killed me. It was a great first half, but how I didn't have a heart attack I'll never know, I got headaches from the pure adrenaline. Blackpool like to make me panic, as they showed at Forest. Every Cardiff goal felt like a knife to the heart and every Blackpool goal was pure ecstasy. Charlie's free-kick was pure perfection, if you only watch one goal, watch that one. It sounds like I'm exaggerating the emotions, I'm really not, its hard to describe the irrational feelings you get at football, its as if your life was on the line. The final 20 minutes felt like 5 weeks, I just stood there in pure fear. I counted down every second of that four minutes injury time.
When the ref finally blew it exploded, there was plenty of grown men crying, everyone was hugging everyone, I have no idea who the people behind us were but the fact they'd just been through the same thing was enough. It was hard to even celebrate, for about 10 minutes I was stood with my hands on my head refusing to believe what I had just seen, it was beyond a dream.
Back at the hotel, it felt like a muted celebration, for the most part people sat around and wondered what the hell had happened. No-one could celebrate because no-one believed it, it was bizarre. We re-watched the goals, then the whole match, listened to endless interviews and it still didn't sink in. Every so often someone would realise something like 'We're going to be on Match of the Day' or 'Rooney will be playing at Bloomfield Road' and everyone just stared in amazement.
I hope it'll sink in soon, I can't think of a bigger footballing fairytale that's come true in recent times, and it was Blackpool that was part of it, amazing. To anyone who comes back with 'You're going straight back down anyway' there's two things. One, no Blackpool fan could care less, we want our one year of the dream and we'll happily settle back into the Championship £90 million better off, reaching Derby's 11 points would be considered a victory. Second, these same people writing us off now were the same one's who said we were favourites to be relegated this season, now we're in the Premier League, so suck on that bitches.
One more thing. Were you watching PNE? :)
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