Cod Almighty | Diary

Hegativity is what we need

12 April 2018

It was when I got released from prison that things started to go wrong for your Guest Diarist. Town had just dropped out of the league but prison is like being alone on an island, you feel cushioned from blows, insulated from reality, content to daydream about a brighter future. So it hadn't really hit me. But three things combined in a perfect storm when they let me out wearing a curfew tag.

First, being condemned to watch a truly dreadful England in the world cup which had just started. Second the dawning realisation that my beloved #GTFC would very likely not regroup and bounce back in to the league 'proper' any time soon. Nor would it accept non-league life and cut its cloth accordingly but stagger on self-importantly puffed with the expectation that its birthright - league membership - would be handed back in short order, spending yet more money it didn't have. And third that a curfew tag meant you had to be indoors by 7pm every night.

Now that wasn't the problem actually, the problem was that you couldn't go out until 7am the next morning. I am a morning man who likes to watch the dawn break, close my eyes and listen to the vegetables growing in my allotment, perhaps catch a glimpse of the fox on his way to bed and to ask the ghostly barn owl things like the meaning of life and when will the Mariners be good again. By the time I could do those things again it was a new season and the mornings were drawing in.

New seasons always start with hope whether in the garden or on the football field. The football very occasionally ends with joy, but more often than not ends leaving you with nothing but hope for the next season. But sometimes a season grips you right to the end as your beloved club slips, unnoticed at first, in to some kind of muddy bog which proves alarmingly difficult to get out of. Like now.

Now here is a FACT for you, gentle reader, no-one ever died in a muddy bog. That whole quicksand movie thing is made up. I mean when I saw Peter Barlow up to his neck on Blackpool beach in Corrie I just laughed. But swamps and such can be very debilitating as we fans know only too well. December was a month of going well off the boil and losing a few. January was about breaking the spell and working out that as few as three wins out of a dozen or more matches would probably be enough to stay up. The month slipped by with hardly a goal and nowhere near enough points. After January comes February and blind panic sets in. The owner had decided the club didn't really need a playmaker or a proven goalscorer and had cashed in a few quid (probably to compensate for dwindling attendances). Which is akin to a struggling restaurant inflating its prices to attract more custom. He also waited until the transfer window closed and then sacked the manager. We were up to our waist.

So with half a dozen games to go, a new manager and a bloated squad full of triers who were mostly very trying indeed, every man, woman and dog was reduced to predictions and calculations about how we would stay up or go down. Most predictions were starkly bleak, dangerously close to invoking a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even I was muttering darkly again about the Fenty curse.

On a slow news day someone at Cod Almighty decided to put a piece together featuring the prediction of some Town fans. Not ordinary fans like you and me but folk with a bona fide track record in GTFC opinion forming; folks we've vaguely heard of from the Supporters Trust, ex-Telewag men and some hack who works for the Daily bloody Mail. I hate the Daily Mail. Not because it is Tory, because it is a nasty vindictive, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic rag (had to get that off my chest gentle reader – forgive me, but never ever forgive the Daily Mail). Anyway all these folk, bar one, were pretty unanimous in thinking that Town will go down. Muttering about the hopeless task the new manager had been given, drawing parallels in excruciating statistical comparisons to the last relegation season, and generally saying there might be mathematical hope but really, let's face it, there's no hope.

The one shining beacon in this turgid dismal piece was lit by the one ordinary fan whose opinion was asked. And Kris Green is not ordinary – I never met her but know she puts enormous effort in to representing us fans so we get a good day out at the football. But she writes like a fan because she is one. The one without a reputation to consider wrote the most sense of anyone and deserves all the reputation in my book. When I read through that article I thought for me the rest of the talking heads might as well jump in the sea. And it wasn't that Kris exuded blind faith, false positivity or misguided optimism but she recognised the simple fact that football is far from an exact science and so Town have to keep on trying their absolute hardest to the very end.

And what did Town do to rebut these nay-saying big beasts floundering about in their swamp? They won a game. Not well, not convincingly, with a fairly lucky decision maybe, but the record books and the league table show three points to Town. And then Chesterfield played one of their games in hand and failed to win despite being trumpeted as being about to climb out of trouble under 'lucky' Jack Lester. We know how bad we are, however Jolley shuffles the large pack at his disposal the line-up will always be weak and lacking. But those around us seem equally flawed and we got more points before christmas. So, suddenly we have a better than even chance of finishing third from bottom. Baby steps, keep taking baby steps forward.

So remember when you are in a bog you can always get out but it helps if folk on the edge are cheering you on rather than dryly concluding you don't have enough foot-pounds of torque to succeed. All you need to do is spread your weight, not panic and take grimly determined slow steps. Come on Town. See yer.