Cod Almighty | Diary

No disrespect to the likes of Morecambe...

22 June 2016

Wicklow Diary writes: Shiny new fixtures! A big long list of 'em. Get your travelcard and saver tickets lined up – we really are back. What a relief to want to see the fixture list again. Non-League new ground novelty wore off quickly, and six years of "where the hell are these places?" had taken the fun out of it. It's nice to start with a home game but with so few midweek games it's disappointing to see that they include long trips to Newport, Colchester and Portsmouth.

The Cod Almighty rough guides to all our opponents are at an even earlier stage than Hursty's squad building. While we wait, check out the work of statman Ben Mayhew, who has assessed the difficulty of each fixture. His numbers won't tell you where to find a decent pie and pre-match beer, but they do give some indication as to whether we've got a sticky start. (One caveat: his calculations use the early bookmakers' odds for promotion and apart from the obvious big guns, these seem to have been assigned fairly randomly.)

Along with the rough guides, CA will be able to display the Football League fixtures again without waiting for a solicitor's letter to arrive with threats of fines and/or jail. It's a positive sign that at least some of the silliness in football these days is reversible.

I'd prefer not to mention Podge's departure again after it was covered by original/regular Diary yesterday. Cranky when Podge was benched temporarily last season, we liked it less when we learned the arrangement would be permanent. We obviously need to put it behind us now. For balance though, Hursty had his say on the subject yesterday afternoon in a thorough interview with Matt Dean. It appears there was a disappointing lack of communication and no actual contract negotiations took place. Podge may have taken umbrage at the reduced offer and his agent left Hurst waiting on a call with a counter-offer that never arrived. Grrrr, two wrongs go to make another wrong.

Anyway, case closed, Podge's gone, and I hope he gets a good reception on a scoreless return to BP in October. Having Irish connections didn't mean I could pronounce his name properly – I know three Pádraigs and they all pronounce it differently – but it did make his season extra special for me and the three junior Mariners in my house.

Actually, before we move on, the club deserve some credit for offering Podge the contract extension at Christmas. They took stick at the time from fans who thought that the club was either too stupid or plain unwilling to do so.

What are you waiting for? I said deserve some credit; I didn't say I was going to give it too.

In other moves, ex-Mariner Dayle Southwell has bucked a trend and signed with Wycombe Wanderers, opponents on our first league trip of the season. Typically an ex-youth teamer being released by Town is the beginning of the end before you've even got properly started. Pruned by Hursty in 2014, Dayle deserves congratulations for the resolve shown to salvage his career and make it into the League. Again, let's hear some loud cheers for one of our own on his scoreless return (kinell, these are starting to add up now – who else is likely to return with a score to settle? Scott Brown didn't exactly have a smooth departure either. We might have to get Ben to add the grudge parameter to our fixture difficulty calculation).

The squad rebuild isn't quite as bad as Aliens 3 – when, during the opening credits, they killed off everyone who had somehow managed to survive Aliens 2 – but it does have that feel

Yesterday's diary was a bit of a late edition in order to scoop up all the comings and goings. One piece of housekeeping not covered: Richard Tait's departure is now also confirmed. We don't know where he's off to, but we can thank him for a fantastic season of patrolling and marauding on the right side of the pitch. Like the lads released in May, it's genuinely sad to see them all go.

It's not quite as bad as Aliens 3 – when, during the opening credits, they killed off everyone who had somehow managed to survive Aliens 2 – but it does have that feel. Worryingly, that sequel was made on the cheap and most of the cast had Yorkshire accents. In space. I haven't trusted Sigourney Weaver since.

I suppose creation needs destruction and all that. Hursty alluded in the Matt Dean interview to some of the team not getting his message towards the end of the season. He suggested that a break-up of the side was planned whether we were promoted or not. He didn't seem to be aware that many supporters had plans of a literal break-up of him and his players were the latter the case.

Whether we'll see a new formation is open to speculation. It could be dangerous for Hursty to be watching the Euros on the telly: who knows what he might pick up on there. I'm still attributing that Disley-Nolan-Clay midfield that we started fielding against Wrexham last season to the death of Johan Cruyff three days previously.

Several documentaries screened in the following days showed Cruyff looking suave and sketching out sexy systems on a chalkboard. This was bound to end with managers trying something new that weekend. Who couldn't be influenced by that? I nearly took up smoking and threw the kids off FIFA to try a few for myself. Messageboards went into overdrive across Europe. User shared tributes and GIFs of Cruyff's trademark turn, of course – but these were swamped by fans asking why their regular left-back played on the right side of a six-man hexagonal midfield that afternoon.

In terms of new incomings, I'll be clicking on 'send' well before lunch and right now we have no further news. I'm tuning out of the speculation too: Devon Diary is your man for keeping on top of that. Let Hursty sweat it. As long as he learned his lesson from the Straker signing, we'll be alright.

Straker, as it happens, got hooked up with Aldershot yesterday. What do you mean you don't care? If a tree falls in the woods and it lands on Anthony Straker, would anyone know? Hang on, I'm going to give him a break. He joined at a time when the team was out of form and he only had a couple of games. The same applied to Josh Magennis at Town and yet he played against Germany in the Euros the other night. Sometimes Town is the wrong place at the wrong time for a player.

The Football League made a breathless announcement yesterday that the draw for the EFL Cup will be made live at 1pm today. LIVE. Can you believe it? Mere decades after it and other cups started broadcasting their draws live. But this is the first time on Facebook! Aren't you excited? No, me neither. Just give us Scunny away and be done with it.

The EFL Cup? What's that anyway? It's ironic that multiple sponsorships and rebrandings have helped the League Cup to lose its identity rather than strengthen it. The name itself is so bad that it actually sounds like it is sponsored. I think the rule here is two-letter acronyms are good, three letters are bad.

It doesn't matter how many Facebook bells and whistles they hang off the event today: it will never reach the heights of the genre. Ray Wilkins is doing the deadpan honours this afternoon, but the 1992 Rumbelows League Cup quarter-final draw had Saint and Greavsie. With Donald Trump.

That's not static or a problem with the recording you hear. It's the sound of Chris Morris ripping up a script for The Day Today.