2015/16 · Home

The shirt of resistance. After back-to-back relegations, the Glovers landed in League Two in 2015/16 and spent the winter staring into the non-league abyss: sixteen games without a win, the division's worst run, Paul Sturrock's sacking and the rescue engineered by Darren Way, a son of the club, who took charge in December and prevented a third consecutive drop. The golden 8 belonged to Marc Laird, a Scottish midfielder raised at Manchester City, and the numbering itself tells a story: The Football League's golden lion marks the final season of that 128 year old brand, rebadged EFL the following summer. Sondico's hoops, with Jones on the chest and Thatchers cider on the back, dressed a season of pure suffering at Huish Park, the kind that produces no trophies but plenty of gratitude. There are shirts of glory and shirts of survival; this is one of the latter, and the latter count too.

Here at Hoopster this is the shirt of resistance: a whole winter staring into the abyss and a son of the club pulling it back up. Survival seasons deserve a display case too.