Cod Almighty | Article

by Theme team editor

14 January 2015

We expected erratic Town players to offer a strong squad. We were right.

Goalkeepers

Phil Barnes nominated by Adam Deller, Neville Butt
Tommy Forecast by Too Good to Go Down
Paul Reece by Richard Whitehouse

Too Good to Go Down admits that to describe Forecast as erratic would be a compliment. There's certainly a case for Reece, but Adam points out the keeper we remember as 'dodgy' was once the fans' player of the season. Neville makes sure we ink Phil Barnes into our team: superb one minute, unable to juggle even a single ball the next. Yes, he fumbled a cross at his near post into the net at Stockport and let in three goals from crosses against Bury. But yes, he also put in the occasional agile display, including a clean sheet at Sincil Bank.

Right back

Peter Bore by Dan Humphrey, Donk Dawson, Neville Butt, Too Good to Go Down
Alan Neilson by Adam Deller

It's not even worth rehearsing the argument: this is a tap-in. Peter Bore was "the dictionary definition of an erratic Grimsby Town player" for TGTGD. Donk calls him the "eternal enigma" who should have been worth six figures but "ended up with the six-fingered", while for Neville he was "caught up in the headlights, afraid to move."

Left back

Tom Newey by Too Good to Go Down
Aswad Thomas by Dan Humphrey
Menno Willems by Adam Deller

We can't have Newey. TGTGD argues that his subsequent career suggests he had to have been good at some point, but it's players who were erratic in the black and white we want. We can't have Willems. He was OK on loan then consistently awful, and mostly in midfield, in any case.

Strictly speaking, current players ought to be off limits but compared to his rivals, "erratic" is positively kind. We'll let Dan have Aswad Thomas.

Central defenders

Andy Butler by Too Good to Go Down
Simon Ford by Adam Deller, Donk Dawson
Scott Garner by Too Good to Go Down
Georges Santos by Dan Humphrey
Vance Warner by Adam Deller

Whatever his overall career may show, TGTGD concedes that 'erratic' would be a kind word for Butler's four-match loan spell for Town. Adam recalls handing the man of the match award sponsored by his dad's company to another loanee in Warner. We take a strict line on sponsors' man of the match awards at Cod Almighty. That just proves he was terrible. Dan says of Santos that he was "superb one moment, psychotic the next", but it was the borderline legality that made him so good.

That leaves us with Simon Ford, Adam's "Netto Rio Ferdinand" who, as Donk says, was one moment being "scouted by the likes of Wolves, the next being replaced by the likes of Tony Crane". To join him we have Scott Garner, "one of those players who the fans demanded he played, yet whenever he got the chance never took it".

Midfield

John Cockerill by Richard Whitehouse
Gary Harkins by Neville Butt, Too Good to Go Down
Graham Hockless by Dan Humphrey, Too Good to Go Down
Thomas Pinault by Dan Humphrey
Ashley Sestanovich by Adam Deller, Neville Butt
Ciaran Toner by Adam Deller, Dan Humphrey, Too Good to Go Down

Harkins fails. Keep him in mind for 'a rubbish for Town, good elsewhere' team. Hockless, too – "the myth is better than the midfielder" – belongs in some other team: a 'messageboard nesbit heroes' XI, perhaps. The case for Sestanovich is based on his off-field antics – refusing to be sub, abusing referees, driving offences and finally armed robbery. His moments of on-field excellence were far too fleeting, though, for him to make an erratic XI. Pinault too is tempting but he was less erratic than left adrift as Russell Slade's conception of the team he wanted evolved.

Ciaran Toner could play in a couple of spots but we'll put him in midfield. As Adam says: "The man drove you absolutely mad. Capable of moments way above our league, but more often could be found plodding around the centre circle, possibly hunting for snacks."

And then there is John Cockerill. Our first thought is that he was one of the steadier players in a mercurial team, one of those 'unseen presence' types of player. But then amid the long stretches when you made no particular note of him, there are some great and important goals, coruscating runs from midfield and emphatic finishes.

Right winger

Gary Childs by Richard Whitehouse
Terry Cooke by Adam Deller, Dan Humphrey
Terry Curran by Richard Whitehouse

To our mind this team is made for Gary Childs, a man who could have you wondering why he didn't play for England one day, wondering how he had a professional contract the next. One day he'd thread a powerful shot through the eye of a needle. The next he'd blaze over in front of the sticks. Adam does a good job with Cooke – an exciting let-down with all the tricks, usually wondering which team-mate's wife to speak to next – but it's no contest.

Left winger

Kingsley Black by Adam Deller
Paul Emson by Richard Whitehouse
Nick Hegarty by Neville Butt, Too Good to Go Down
Serge Makofo by Donk Dawson
Andy Parkinson by Dan Humphrey

Ever since we revived Theme Team, Adam has been nominating Kingsley Black, capable of a good free kick one in ten times, the other nine hitting the first man. Adam says he'll go crazy if we don't put him in soon. Well, let's see.

There's no contest from Hegarty or Parkinson, triers both of them. There'd be a case for Paul Emson, we suspect, but Richard is relying on the name alone doing the job.

Ah, but who is this streaking down the left, leaving the right back for dead, the opposition penalty area agape, until he runs out of pitch? It can only be Serge Makofo, worthy of comparison with Gareth Bale according to Paul Furlong, a "disastrous" signing according to John Fenty. He was "picked, dropped, released, re-signed and released".

Strikers

Jean-Louis Akpa Akpro by Dan Humphrey, Too Good to Go Down
Keith Alexander by Richard Whitehouse
Lee Ashcroft by Richard Lord, Richard Whitehouse
Barry Conlon by Adam Deller, Neville Butt, Too Good to Go Down
Andy Cook by Dan Humphrey
Anthony Elding by Richard Whitehouse
Phil Jevons by Richard Whitehouse
Jack Lester by Adam Deller
Scott McGarvey by Richard Whitehouse
Darren Mansaram by Dan Humphrey, Neville Butt
Andy Taylor by Neville Butt
Robert Taylor by Neville Butt

The bar is high, though not so high that one or two of these strikers couldn't lift the ball over it, having engineered time and space for themselves inside the goal area.

Many of them, in Neville's words, are instances of errant management, giving us a flash of a feelgood factor with a couple of early performances, then allowed to stagnate. There's no room for youngsters learning (or not) their trade, or for cynical hacks trying to earn one last contract, so the cases for Lester, Mansaram, Andy Taylor, and Cook, and Conlon and Elding are dismissed. And 'erratic' implies affection, so we're certainly not going to waste space on McGarvey.

Robert Taylor belongs to that period when loan players were beginning to arrive with bewildering frequency. His presence was too ephemeral to make the team, but he does provide an entertaining cameo. After injury had stalled his career at Wolves, he started his spell at Grimsby with a toe-poke finish against Rotherham. In the next game, at home to Bradford, he started like a man trying to make up for lost time, with four good chances in the first 20 minutes, the best a shot on the turn whistling past the left post. Then he got frustrated. "He went for a high lob with a Bradford defender. There was a bit of shirt pulling by both parties as the Bradford keeper caught the ball, but for no reason at all Taylor kicked out at his marker and the ref had no option other than to send Taylor off."

Any of the other four nominations would grace the team, so we'll be guided by the eloquence of the cases made for them. Richard has nothing to say about Jevons so he can bugger off to Yeovil. The unpredictable Akpa Akpro seemed "to have lots of great attributes, but couldn't hit a barn door".

Close, but not quite a match, for big Keith Alexander who "could and did give the world-class Gary Pallister the runaround... could and did miss an open goal from two yards at Halifax". To partner him, Lee Ashcroft, remembered thus by Richard Lord: "His first touch would often see the ball sail into the Main Stand, and then, the same match, he'd stroke the ball into the corner of the net so sumptuously and casually that you'd think he could play with his eyes closed. He'd be brilliant one game, terrible the next, but he'd kick the ball into the net from 12 yards with the confidence of someone having a worldy."

The leaderboard

The honours are shared around evenly for the Erratic XI, with everyone getting two or three nominations into the XI. The exceptions are the Richards Lord – who had a 100 per cent record with his one nomination – and Whitehouse, who has four players in the starting line-up.

No. of successful nominations
12	Adam Deller
11	Dan Humphrey
9	Neville Butt
5	Donk Dawson, Richard Whitehouse
4	Too Good to Go Down
3	Tony Butcher
2	Adam Howard
1	Richard Lord, Adam Burns, Ashley Smith, Charles Lumley, Chris Parrott, Jack Connor, Jem Halfpenny, Martin Robinson, Pete Hirst, Richard Bedwell, Rob McIlveen

Goodbye for now

The Theme Team editor is being assigned to other duties for the next few months, so we are going to give Theme Team a rest for a while. That leaves Adam Deller at the top of the leaderboard, by way of compensation for not getting Kingsley Black into any single team.

Thanks very much to everyone who has contributed to Theme Team.

Have we missed any erratic players? Tell us about them.