So last night Burnley - who are 5th in the championship - beat Chelsea - who are top of the premiership in the 4th round of the Carling Cup. Not only did they beat them, but they did it after holding them to a 1-1 draw for 120 minutes of football and after going down to ten men and after the game went to sudden death penalties.
There just aren't words to express how amazing the evening was.
First of all, I was completely transported out of my London life and back in to my formative years as I stood next to my big brother right in amongst the six thousand Burnley fans that had travelled down to London.
Glorious memories of the many away games I went to growing up came flooding back as I was greeted by old friends and complete strangers with equal regard and warmth.
Within only a few minutes the overtly aristocratic Stamford Bridge - which is only 4 and a half miles from my flat - seemed like a different world with all it's suited fans and it's Marco Pierre White restaurant.
Not that any of this phased the Burnley fans - they still got the beers in, they still had a laugh and they still sang their hearts out from start to finish.
Even before kick off the atmosphere in the Shed End was victorious - Burnley fans were treating the game like their own cup final, a trip to London, a premiership team, it might as well have been at Wembley for they were just here to have a good time...and boy did they!
Burnley were the underdogs and though they were occasionally outplayed by some lovely football from Chelsea they never let Chelsea take complete control of the game - even after Drogba scored in the first half - and they never gave up either, as Akinbiyi proved with his equalizer in the second half.
Extra time felt like the longest 30 minutes of my life - I don't even watch the clock that much when I'm on the treadmill - every second was agonisingly slow and the only thing that eased the pain was to alternate whole heartedly joining in the Burnley chants with screaming 'Come on Burnley' at the players.
You might think it seems silly but I felt like the louder I yelled the more chance we would have of holding on and whether the yelling made any difference or not the fact was that we did manage to hold on till the very end.
Then the thought of stepping up to take penalties alongside some of the world's finest players didn't bother the boys from Burnley one little bit (apart from Elliot perhaps) and it certainly didn't bother Burnley's goalkeeper; the mighty Brian 'Beast' Jensen who saved not one, but two of Chelsea's attempts.
The feelings that coarse through you when you are watching your team take penalties - as any England fan knows - are an indescribably painful mixture of pride, nervousness and sheer hope.
In a way it made me smile to think that so many people - myself included - spend so much of their busy working life 'stressed out'. Next time I'm having a bad day in the office I'm going to try to imagine what Michael Duff felt like stepping up in front of the Chelsea fans to take his penalty.
And if I'm having a really bad day I'm going to try and remember how wonderful it felt watching Jensen save Mikel's penalty and take us through to the next round.
There's no doubt I am excited to see who we get next in the cup (I'm secretly hoping for another London premiership team) and I'm excited to see how the rest of the season pans out for us, but, as a London claret, nothing that comes after today will feel quite as sweet as the sudden death victory of last night because it wasn't just a game, it was much more than that.
As a wannabe playwright I love a good metaphor and the game somehow became a metaphor for my life at the moment.
A metaphor for how important it is to understand where you've come from in order to get to where you need to.
A metaphor for holding dear to your heart not wealth or glory but honesty and friendship.
A metaphor for facing your worst nightmare and not only not letting it defeat you, but actually going on to defeat it.
Christopher Booker, who has written a gloriously informative book called 'The Seven Basic Plots; Why We Tell Stories' would perhaps describe the plot of last night as a typical 'Overcoming the Monster' story where the monster is overcome by the hero.
Booker eloquently states that the bigger the threat of evil the more it matters that it is overcome and the more challenging it is for our hero to be victorious the more we truly experience the story.
Last night's victory was such an experience, and for the first time in nearly 20 years of being a Burnley fan, what the result of the game really means wasn't lost on me.
There just aren't words to express how amazing the evening was.
First of all, I was completely transported out of my London life and back in to my formative years as I stood next to my big brother right in amongst the six thousand Burnley fans that had travelled down to London.
Glorious memories of the many away games I went to growing up came flooding back as I was greeted by old friends and complete strangers with equal regard and warmth.
Within only a few minutes the overtly aristocratic Stamford Bridge - which is only 4 and a half miles from my flat - seemed like a different world with all it's suited fans and it's Marco Pierre White restaurant.
Not that any of this phased the Burnley fans - they still got the beers in, they still had a laugh and they still sang their hearts out from start to finish.
Even before kick off the atmosphere in the Shed End was victorious - Burnley fans were treating the game like their own cup final, a trip to London, a premiership team, it might as well have been at Wembley for they were just here to have a good time...and boy did they!
Burnley were the underdogs and though they were occasionally outplayed by some lovely football from Chelsea they never let Chelsea take complete control of the game - even after Drogba scored in the first half - and they never gave up either, as Akinbiyi proved with his equalizer in the second half.
Extra time felt like the longest 30 minutes of my life - I don't even watch the clock that much when I'm on the treadmill - every second was agonisingly slow and the only thing that eased the pain was to alternate whole heartedly joining in the Burnley chants with screaming 'Come on Burnley' at the players.
You might think it seems silly but I felt like the louder I yelled the more chance we would have of holding on and whether the yelling made any difference or not the fact was that we did manage to hold on till the very end.
Then the thought of stepping up to take penalties alongside some of the world's finest players didn't bother the boys from Burnley one little bit (apart from Elliot perhaps) and it certainly didn't bother Burnley's goalkeeper; the mighty Brian 'Beast' Jensen who saved not one, but two of Chelsea's attempts.
The feelings that coarse through you when you are watching your team take penalties - as any England fan knows - are an indescribably painful mixture of pride, nervousness and sheer hope.
In a way it made me smile to think that so many people - myself included - spend so much of their busy working life 'stressed out'. Next time I'm having a bad day in the office I'm going to try to imagine what Michael Duff felt like stepping up in front of the Chelsea fans to take his penalty.
And if I'm having a really bad day I'm going to try and remember how wonderful it felt watching Jensen save Mikel's penalty and take us through to the next round.
There's no doubt I am excited to see who we get next in the cup (I'm secretly hoping for another London premiership team) and I'm excited to see how the rest of the season pans out for us, but, as a London claret, nothing that comes after today will feel quite as sweet as the sudden death victory of last night because it wasn't just a game, it was much more than that.
As a wannabe playwright I love a good metaphor and the game somehow became a metaphor for my life at the moment.
A metaphor for how important it is to understand where you've come from in order to get to where you need to.
A metaphor for holding dear to your heart not wealth or glory but honesty and friendship.
A metaphor for facing your worst nightmare and not only not letting it defeat you, but actually going on to defeat it.
Christopher Booker, who has written a gloriously informative book called 'The Seven Basic Plots; Why We Tell Stories' would perhaps describe the plot of last night as a typical 'Overcoming the Monster' story where the monster is overcome by the hero.
Booker eloquently states that the bigger the threat of evil the more it matters that it is overcome and the more challenging it is for our hero to be victorious the more we truly experience the story.
Last night's victory was such an experience, and for the first time in nearly 20 years of being a Burnley fan, what the result of the game really means wasn't lost on me.
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