Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment the Cobblers preferred the lucrative play-offs to some Argos vouchers for finishing third in npower League Two, but not scoring in four of the last five games suggests Wembley was on someone’s mind.
The big match, not promotion, is the prize now.
For Northants, those big pay-days are equally as rare, and so they have to exploit their one-day fixtures.
But football and rugby, not the Steelbacks, are on Northamptonians’ minds right now, as barely 300 people rocked up at Wantage Road on Friday for the first floodlight of the season, a thumping defeat completing the embarrassment.
It was a baron, chilly and soggy affair, but if Sky TV wants a Friday night YB40 in the first week of May then they get one, however miserable it all is.
In some ways you can’t blame the club for not wanting to go all out to promote this game, or for the Stillbottoms to perform in it, but it certainly proved that there is no longer any life in the longer day/night games, and might explain the ‘why bother?’ attitude.
The vastly improved County Ground deserves better, and still that ghastly temporary TV commentary box returns every year to remind us of our shortcomings.
It is an unwelcome and rocky platform to give the cocooned Mike Atherton, Bob Willis and Nasser Hussain even more reason to hate us.
One day it’s just going to topple over and that will be that, for them and us, a fitting tribute to the Stillbottoms these days.
So unwanted was the match, that the BBC didn’t even bother to report it on their website.
It was just a thoroughly miserable night all round and seeing the handful of pay-on-the-gate spectators having their alcohol taken off them at the gate to squeeze a few more pennies out of them at the bar just summed up the club’s feelings towards the spectators at these games.
On the pitch and it was the same old tired and naïve 40 over stuff, although better than the first game against Notts Outlaws.
Thankfully, with the cameras present, Trent Copeland and David Willey were keen to play to impress the selectors, and there was another look at great white hopes Ben Duckett and Matt Spriegel for the home fans.
Sussex Sharks had the best of the weather and batted first on a slow but fair top, and quickly decided it was a game for building partnerships and so the run-rate, pulling from the Sussex playbook that has accrued a trophy nearly every season since the turn of the century.
This is a team fully versed in what’s required to win one-day matches on whatever surface or conditions, comfortably recovering from 12 for three to 185 for four, captain Alex Wakely, somewhat fatally, taking the spikes off the throat by pulling Copeland off after just four of his overs.
I would have given him at least six, or even all eight to do further early damage on a pitch offering early movement.
That was the victory chance right there.
Chris Nash (95) and Ed Joyce (93) piled up a record one-day fourth-wicket partnership against Northamptonshire away from Hove, 172 also the second highest ever for the same wicket on the ground by a visiting domestic team.
It’s become just too easy to score off Northants. You expect them to go for a minimum 220-250 every match now.
The pitch was central and so it wasn’t a day for boundaries, the Sharks simply working it around for ones and twos as Wakely’s field increasingly stood back, allowing this match winning partnership to trot along.
Alex has showed no real nouse for the format so far.
To be fair, 215 for seven was a lower score than it could have been, although the partnership clearly put them ahead in the game for the conditions.
The highlight of the night for the home fans was Copeland’s excellent five for 32 from his eight overs, the first Aussie to take five wickets for us in one-day match.
The Stillbottoms took to the pitch with a chance of getting the runs, but not off a team like Sussex.
They are adept at squeezing team’s dry of runs and so forcing wickets on slow pitches.
And it proved to be the case, the home team briefly in it at 78 for three, but the Sharks moving in for the kill as the natural light surrendered to the halogen and misty rain.
It was soon 122 for nine and the fans washed away into the night after another miserable defeat.
We are hopeless with these central pitches and I can’t remember when we last won a floodlit match.
People ask what’s wrong with us in 40 over cricket?
Well, it’s simple: It doesn’t matter to us.
The worry now is will this rot feed through to the championship, as it has for the last three years.
And on final note we should say goodbye to a couple of County stalwarts, Hilda Clarke and Peter Berg.
The flags may well have rightly been at half-mast for ex-committee man John Scopes, but it’s the unpaid tribute that should go to the diehard fans, only terminal illness keeping them away from their beloved team.
Peter ran the Supporters Club and knew the game was up last year to cancer, a phlegmatic man at the best of times, and made it the time to say his goodbyes.
Hilda, on the other hand, could take it or leave it at the end, and is probably cadging a cigarette off Kevin Curran right now.
KC was her type of cricketer, his blue eyes a particular fancy.
The cricket matters more to the older ones, a lot more than we think, and that shouldn’t be forgotten.
They are the true guardians of the memories from the days when Northamptonshire played cricket with a swagger.
Will we ever see the likes of the guile of Anil Kumble or the terrifying glare of Curtly Ambrose again at Northampton?
Or for that matter the impudent square-cut of Allan Lamb, or the playboy cricket of Wayne Larkins.
The glamour seems to have long since gone from Northamptonshire CCC.