It will be a slow death, mourned by few. Barnet lost their future along with their Football League status at precisely 4.57 on Saturday afternoon. The Torquay fans who streamed across Underhill's notorious slope will not care about their plight.
Relief eases the conscience, excuses everything.
It was mad, manic. It was only an approximation of professional football as we know it. Torquay, three goals ahead by half-time, were reduced to a collection of gibbering wrecks until an inexperienced referee, who had also succumbed to the pressure of the occasion, put them out of their misery. For Barnet, there were no compensations. A decade almost to the day after leaving the Conference, Barnet return there in a state of some disarray.