THIS feels like the end. Altrincham away? That was just something we used to joke about. We never actually thought it could happen, because we’re Oldham Athletic. We’ve been in the Football League for 116 seasons.

But now it’s not something we joke about. As Forest Green’s iFollow commentators quipped, Altrincham away will now be our local derby.

That’s a bleak scenario for us to be in. It wasn’t too long ago that we were playing City, United, Liverpool and Arsenal in league football and fought well against them; now our history looks like it couldn’t be true.

Imagine saying to a Latics fan in the 1990s that only 30 years later the league status of this once-great football club would be decided by games against Salford City and Forest Green Rovers – they would have laughed in your face.

I’ve spent the majority of the last season with a feeling deep down that we would be relegated, but I’ve always been in denial. I know that it’s true, but the fact that Oldham Athletic will be playing National League football just feels wrong.

The denial and jokery has been there as a way to cloud the pain which is inevitably going to hit all of us fans. It was difficult when – only a few years ago – we dropped down to our current division but that will pale in comparison to how things will feel after this next week or so.

Of course, there’s a mathematical possibility that we could stay up, but you’d need to be the world’s most optimistic person to cling onto the hope that it could still happen. Or maybe you’d just be like the rest of us who can’t fathom what is realistically going to occur.

It’s utterly heartbreaking to see the way that this club has been dismantled from the inside over the past 17 or so years. It may have accelerated in the previous four, but the wheels were pointed in that direction many years ago.

But now it’s too late to do anything to halt the inevitable. The fans fought for our club, John Sheridan has fought to keep it up, but it isn’t enough. It was never going to have been enough.

When – not if – we go down, it’ll hurt. And it won’t stop hurting until we’re back in the EFL.

There are good people out there who could maybe make that a possibility, but for now we are consigned to misery.