'I’m a derby-day absentee. Please make me rue it ' ... the David Rawson Rotherham United fan column

Mid-table fourth-division opponents, no history between the clubs to give it spice, no connection to former players or managers. Not a local derby. Not a team we haven't played before.

Reader, I did not go.

I've missed games through choice before, of course, but rarely. And always with a sharp feeling of regret, arriving at the point that it becomes physically impossible to get there for kick-off.

Well, not this time.

I don't tell you that to make some grand statement about the State of Things This Season. It's just a thing that happened before that didn't happen again. But still worth recording.

Because, look, it's not that complicated. We sold enough season tickets and made enough from summer transfers to support a healthy wage budget. We've signed exactly the sort of experienced professionals (and signed them early in close season) that you can sign (and sign early) if you have a healthy wage budget.

Now, if you have a healthy wage budget, even if you have nothing else, you can reasonably expect to do well in this division, because there are plenty of teams without healthy wage budgets, who won't be able to attract players as good as yours. You should beat those teams more often than not.

Training grounds, support infrastructure, youth-development pathways, recruitment teams: these matter. But they're more about where you finish in the group of teams who also have healthy wage budgets. (Or, in the league above, where you finish in the group of teams that don't, but that's another discussion).

You won't win every time. Freak results, stupid referees, daft mistakes: all happen. But you should be clearly the better team in principle, if not in practice, on that day.

We've played about 130 minutes of fluent football all season. Twenty minutes either side of half time against Huddersfield and 89 against Wrexham, who were deliberately sitting back and betting (correctly) that we didn't have the wit to open them up. The rest? Largely turgid.

Raggett is a miss (probably, we've not really seen him to tell). Clarke-Harris has a goal in him. But it's not like they're superstars; or their under-studies are total lemons.

Let's be blunt. I think we should be better than this, for the players we've assembled this time around.

I think we are in desperate need of a convincing performance against Barnsley, almost more than a victory.

I'm not going there, either. I want to be made to regret it.