[Devongone]

Barnet 1-3 Eastleigh

Having been carefully run through the current League table, with Eastleigh only three points clear of the drop zone, Paul McCallum misses a penalty and still scores a hat trick to make Chesterfield Champions on an anticlimactic Tuesday night, with an away game at The Shay looming the following evening.

"McCallum is far too hot to handle," according to a rueful Dean Brennan. McCallum for his part is wondering why, if he's that hot, is he always in the National League.

Chesterfield celebrate with a Trebor Mint and a Haliborange overdose before bed-time. Manager Paul Cook remains unavailable for comment.

[Dancingwilldoit]

That would be a big anticlimax.
I see the club are showing the Barnet game in the lounges. Maybe they are expecting it. Either way our game Wednesday looks like it will seal the deal.
It's been a strange but successful season. It's something of a let down though to end it with a bit of a damp squib.

[Devongone]

We are so far clear the end can't be anything else but a damp squib. Would you rather we lost the next five on the trot?

The Shay is a bit of a damp squib in itself I'm afraid, so perhaps we'll wait for a home game.

I was sure Eastleigh would beat Barnet. But then I don't want either Barnet or Bromley to go up with us. I'd love to see Oldham come through the play-offs. The EFL needs them far more than another part of the London commuter belt.

[themaclad]

Getting hammered 4-1 means you can do it at home far better

[theo_luddite]

Hey chaps, so The Shaymen pissed on your parade last night, but if you're gonna win it, win at home in front of all your home fans. Yeah so Barnet won too but you only need a point. Boreham to death on Saturday and celebrate in style. Pointless being depressed when all you need is a point. Now as for our lot .....

[Dancingwilldoit]

In the end we did it with some style. Great performance from all the players today. Wish I could have been there but got rid of my overcoat a couple of months ago, you just don't need one with temperatures 20 plus.
Back where we should be, the last 6 years are finally a distant memory. Must admit that today brought tears to my eyes. It was a case of you knew it was coming but after Weds night your thoughts turned to Barnet dropping points rather than us actually winning it
The rot started with Gary bloody Caldwell. We've just proved there is life after death.
We are the Champions .

[themaclad]

2015 played PNE in play offs to get to the Championship we won and you went on a long slide, upwards only now, watched it yesterday deserved win got plenty of time Paul Cook calls it how it is, don't mess it up again

[Devongone]

Dancing finally defeated his nemesis Nathan Ashmore. Sorry Nathan mate, but if you let Grimes head in from three yards out that's rubbish keeping. Come out and catch it mate. You might have gone in 0-0 at halftime and not come out for the second half as if you'd already lost.

Our rot started when Cookie not so secretly agreed to go to Portsmouth before we'd even played a play-off game. It started when he found out he wouldn't have the money to keep his players and build a promotion winning side if we are honest. We played Preston with a keeper who hadn't played a competitive game for two years to kind of celebrate the moment before our bungee jump......

But that is all behind us. Cookie came back and got us up with an exciting mixture of inept defending and incisive
attacking. Cut out the former and sharpen up the latter slightly and who knows where that might take us?

Questions now start to ask themselves. Do we need to get rid of anyone? Who CAN we keep? Who can we sign? And do we have any money to spend anyway? I'd still be in for Kane Drummond from Macclesfield, and assuming no big guns have got wise to him, I wouldn't mind Nevett from Rochdale - 18 and a wand of a left foot at centre back. (Endrick on loan for a season?)

I cried when I saw how happy that win had made people who must have known we were the all-time racing certs. Yes, we deserved it and by a country mile too.

[theo_luddite]

Well done chaps/chapesses.

Seems like you've got a decent owner at long last, unless he/they suddenly panic next season at the slightly(?) increased costs (wage increases all round!) and the not very much improved income that TV and those (cough) very nice Prima Donna League people bestow on you.

[SaltergateBorn]

It strikes me that the Kirk brothers are pretty shrewd businessmen - if they`re not, they must have been bloody lucky in life, given what they`re worth according to the sort of numbers I`m reading about - who will have worked out the budgets for next season already. I believe they`re also Chesterfield born and raised and long-standing (life-long?) supporters of the club. Although I`m slightly uneasy about our getting too much in hock to any one or couple of individuals after our experience with the previous regime, this makes me a lot more hopeful this time. I get the impression that they`re in for the long haul and that the future for the club looks ever so slightly rosy at the moment.

If we end up in the Championship in a few years`time, which would not be totally impossible given the sort of financial backing they can offer, does that mean that we would be seen as a `plastic` club by some and how would we Spireites feel about that? I asked that question on a thread some time ago, never thinking that we might be in that position ourselves.

Like you, Dev, I got slightly emotional when I saw the pictures from the ground at the end of the match - yes, even a cynical old bugger like me - and wished I could have been there. Unfortunately I was landing at Heathrow after a 13-hour flight just about the time the final whistle went so couldn`t. Next year, maybe. I still don`t blame Cookie for moving on last time, for reasons I`ve given in the past, and just hope he won`t be put in a position whereby he has to even consider making a similar one again.