Cod Almighty | Diary

Serendipity

17 August 2022

Miss Guest Diary writes: We're less than three weeks into the season and I've already been to four games – it would have been five but I was feeling a bit poorly yesterday so opted to stay home and watch on iFollow instead of travelling to Blundell Park. Given the abandonment, my disappointment turned out to be short-lived.

I was due to have been to eight Town matches by the end of August – can you have too much of a good thing? This whole Saturday-Tuesday malarky we've got going on at the moment feels a bit like an escalating drug habit (I hasten to add I have no personal experience of drugs, but I have watched The Wire several times). It had me wondering what an earth am I going to do when the Forest game next week is over and I have to wait until mid-September for another Tuesday night outing? Of course, with last night's match being abandoned, there is the remote possibility that the club might sneak the rearranged game in on 6 September.

Did I hear some troublemaker at the back muttering about a game at Derby County on 30 August? Wash your mouth out. That's the Boycott Cup and I will, once again, be boycotting it. I was delighted to see the club have also stepped up by completely omitting the competition from the printed fixture list.

I was disappointed that Harry Clifton, my current favourite player, was dropped to the bench last night, but not really surprised following the Telegraph article a couple of days ago suggesting that Hurst is considering different options on the left. Bringing on Amos late in the game and having Glennon move forward worked well against both Northampton and Rochdale. Whether it would have been as effective from the start, the conditions and the duration of last night's game made it impossible to tell, but I do hope this doesn't mean the end of Harry as a regular in the starting line-up; he has worked his socks off for the team over the last two years.

Incidentally, last night was the third time in six years – Derby County in 2017, Macclesfield in 2019 and now Carlisle – that a night match at Blundell Park in August has been abandoned due to torrential rain. Climate change, anyone?

Talking of climate change, it's playing havoc with our vegetables. We're still waiting for enough tomatoes to ripen to make a bowl of soup before the energy price rise makes it economically unviable. Too much sun and now too much rain: it turns out you can have too much of a good thing. Unlike the Stockitts and Petwood revolution, of course.

I'm dashing this diary off early today as I'm lunching with a friend who's a season ticket holder at Stockport County. I really thought they would storm up the division after their strong finish last season, but they have now lost three league games out of four. Awkward.

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