As far as football results have gone this week has been quite good from a personal point of view. Being a Manchester United fan it was a fair start to make the Champions League final with today's 2-1 win against Chelsea effectively ensuring the Premiership title returns to Old Trafford. Whilst it has not been a vintage year at the top of the table with few teams showing improvement on recent years United have shown their experience to produce the results when it matters. Certainly the Champions League final against Barcelona will be a different proposition but it will probably not be the one sided affair that many believe.
   Added to that my home town team of Darlington won their first major piece of silverware by winning the FA Trophy after scoring a last minute winner in extra time to defeat Mansfield. After year upon year of mid table obscurity the last few seasons have been rather more traumatic after the disastrous tenure of George Reynolds nearly brought the club to its knees. Still recovering from the aftershock and chopping and changing of managers resulted in elimination from the league last season with a finish a couple of places from the play offs in the Blue Square league this year. Hopefully this win can galvanize the squad to go on and get promoted back into the league next time.
   If that was not enough it was also pleasing to see Norwich gain promotion to the Premier League after back to back promotions. My three years in that city whilst at University left me with a soft spot for the club who at that time were riding high in the league and qualified for Europe. It was at this time that goalkeeper Bryan Gunn lost his daughter to leukaemia and aside from the obvious sympathy that this generated there was also enormous respect as he was heavily involved with The Big C to research cancer with the School of Biological Sciences at UEA.
   A bit of a downer to end there but in personal football supporting terms still a good week.