Cod Almighty | Diary
Mud goes on mud; the path is the path
10 January 2020
Town’s 1-0 win at Mansfield last weekend provided some satisfying symmetry to the 1-0 home defeat we suffered against the Stags earlier in the season when it was the visitors who were reduced to 10 men but walked away with the three points.
When the referee blew the final whistle at Field Mill, balance was restored and Neal Bishop’s shithousery was nullified.
It’ll have to take something special — a 4-0 win, to be precise — to restore balance against Leyton Orient. When we lost to Orient back in October, it was Ross Embleton’s last match in caretaker charge. Tomorrow, when his team line up against the Mariners at Brisbane Road, it’ll be his first game in charge as permanent boss (or head coach, whatever that is).
So that top-and-tails things nicely. I’m not sure when it was that Town last won 4-0 on the road (please let us know on Twitter as your West Yorkshire Diary certainly wasn’t there to see it, especially if it was Welling) but I do remember us winning 4-0 at Bristol Rovers in 1997-98 when a certain Ian Holloway was their manager.
The home defeat to Orient is one of the few matches I’ve attended this season. Reading my match report back now, while entrenched in all this Ollie positivity, it makes the game feel a lifetime ago. In it, I argued that "10 years on from the shit-show that was Mike Newell’s alcohol-infused reign, Joe Widdowson must have thought nothing has changed."
It’s true. We started the decade near the foot of the fourth division and we finished the decade near the foot of the fourth division. But now, after appointing Holloway as manager and winning a couple of games, it feels like we’ve achieved more in the last 10 days than we have in the last 10 years.
One minute we're winless in 15; the next we're undefeated in four, having conceded just three goals in the last six games. Things can change very quickly in football.
So then, what's been going on? After what felt like months of scraping around for news there's now an avalanche of info coming from GTFC HQ almost every day. It’s probably because Ollie talks so much. He gave a 23-minute interview to Matt Dean yesterday, in which he explained why (and how) he signed Billy Clarke; why he signed ‘Glenno’; why he already knows so much about our youth players, and why he’s told Moses Ogbu to "Go home" (let’s hope the Daily Mail doesn't decontextualize that).
Clarke is definitely going to be in the squad tomorrow, and may even start owing to the absence of Hanson, Green and Ogbu — the trio of senior strikers that began the season so well for us. Jordan Cook is also out; Ethan Robson has returned to Sunderland; Liam Gibson has returned to Newcastle and that means Town’s newest loan signing Anthony Glennon will definitely play.
Ollie is the gift that keeps on giving. It seems he's always talking to someone, somewhere in the media, almost every day. He has Premier League experience (then again, so does Phil Brown) but it’s his passion, enthusiasm and relentless positivity that our fans have latched onto, and I can’t blame them for that.
But when you scratch beneath the surface and look at the material things Ollie is doing, he’s behaving no differently from any other new manager — sifting through what he’s got, edging out players brought in by a previous manager while bringing in his own. Two victories since his arrival has made a world of difference, of course, but I just wonder if we’d all be feeling the same as we do today had we not beaten Salford and Mansfield.
Positivity and confidence carries you a long way in this game. I mean, it's certain we wouldn’t be taking 1,200 fans to a fourth division away game in the capital had Ollie not been appointed. Limbrick could have masterminded a victory over Mansfield but fans are travelling to Orient tomorrow because their friends are, and the fear of missing out when something like this gathers momentum can be reason enough to attend.
Meanwhile, the world of social media, DN35Podcast has been running a World Cup of Chippies tournament on Twitter in a totally unscientific effort to discover the best purveyor of fish and chips in the Grimsby and Cleethorpes area. My chippy of choice, the Ocean Fish Bar, fell at the first hurdle in dramatic circumstances. The quarter final results will be announced at 2pm today.
Another excellent Twitter account, as I’m sure you’re already aware of, is OnThisGTFCDay, which this week acquired a huge bag full of old VHS tapes from the GTFC video crew. There’s already been footage uploaded from the 1983-84 season, and while no one’s pretending the quality is anything other than what you’d expect from a cassette that's 36 years old, it’s still absolute gold for any fan who supported Town in that era but whose memory of those times had naturally faded.
These little clips will bring your memory back into full colour, and I’m sure there will be lots more to come.
All this positivity seems to be touching every corner of the town. We know we're a generous lot but hitting a £3,000 target, set by the Disabled Supporters’ Club to help them attend away games, inside 12 hours is an incredible effort. Well done to everyone who has donated so far — more is always welcome.
Our club is nothing without the support of the fans, after all.
Tomorrow is going to be some occasion. Don’t just enjoy the match — enjoy the day. And UTMM!