Football occasionally behaves like it has a sense of humour. August 8, 2015, was one of those days.
Bournemouth walked out at Dean Court to play their first-ever Premier League match, with Aston Villa providing the opposition. They lost 1–0, Rudy Gestede heading in a late corner, but the result was almost an administrative detail. The real victory had already happened.
Six years earlier, Bournemouth were in League Two, buried near the bottom of the professional game, carrying a 17-point deduction and serious financial problems.
The club was fighting for its existence. Survival was less about transfer budgets and more about finding enough money to keep the lights on and the wages paid.
Then came Eddie Howe.
Under his management, Bournemouth went from fourth-tier survivalists to Premier League newcomers in remarkably little time. The club had gone from rattling buckets for donations to welcoming one of the richest competitions in football to a stadium that held fewer than 12,000 people.
Dean Court suddenly had Premier League football in it. Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool were no longer distant names on television. They were potential visitors.
The Cherries lost their opening game, but nobody in Bournemouth was particularly interested in mourning three points. After everything the club had survived, this was bigger than a result.
It was proof that a football club can stare at the grave, refuse to climb into it, and somehow end up dining at the table it was never supposed to reach.
Not bad for a club that, only a few years earlier, was just trying to stay alive.
