Cod Almighty | Diary
Cod Almighty reserves the right to edit if Omar joins Town this afternoon
8 September 2021
The weekly Omar to Town rumour has hit your social medias. It's tempting when we look back at his promotion heroics and the 19 goals in the half season that followed. Who wouldn't want some of that. That's without mentioning how welcome it would be to have his song back in the mix. Daubney Diary is looking for anything, anything, up to and including a Macarena/Birdie Song crossover chant led by the guy from Steps to take airtime from "We're the boys from Grimsby".
Putting aside the adage of "Be wary of those who give themselves nicknames" and several dozen real reasons, signing Omar 'Call me Maverick' Bogle on loan might work. Paul Hurst might be able to retrieve the big man's head from Planet Bogle and re-dock it with his neck. Maybe we'll work out some deal with Donny after someone on the Fishy does a calcuation that an extra 1,000 on the BP gate would pay for his wages. Maybe his goals put us into a unsurmountable lead by January when he ascends to division three as a king.
There is a pressure to compete in a league with your moneybag Wrexhams and your Stockports. We've seen their like before though. You roll the dice and eventually you throw a pair of ones. It's not solely about sensible finances though.
Imagine for a moment Pettit and Stockwood decided that a healthy focus on long term stability meant that success in the short term was too difficult to achieve. They got the cheque books out and started chucking money about. Like Wrexham, we were suddenly signing division three players like Omar and putting them on £10k a week. It's just not Town, is it? It is an approach and an identity but not one I want. It's the lotto winner who fits a Ferrari with a towbar for his caravan or buys £500 trainers to go digging for bait on Cleethorpes beach.
Being a sustainable, community club means more than just balancing the books. When the success comes it will belong to all of us. The fans will own it because they will have earned it and helped provide it, in part by munching away happily on their locally sourced gourmet chili hotdog with extra couscous.
When someone buys an old club and turns it into their plaything, they do the opposite, they separate fans from the achievement of their team. Success and failure are the same to glory-hunting fans because they played the same part in it: zilch. The classic, often cited, example is 1995 title winners Blackburn starting the following season poorly and playing their Champions League group matches in a sparsely populated Ewood Park.
As Grimbarians, Stockwood and Pettit are owners we can identify with on some level. Paul Hurst is another we can identify with. Of course we all want to see style and skill but underpinning it wil be graft. That's why I get inspired when I see Harry Clifton covering every blade and making every ounce of talent count. Or Luke Waterfall, dissed last season by people who couldn't kick snow off a rope, digging in and coming back fitter and more determined this season.
Town's triumphs have been few and far between but none came with a caveat or a *Bought the league note like Blackburn, Chelsea, Man City and others since. When our next success comes, it will come with the unreserved euphoria that greeted the winner against Barnet with the twelfth man in the stands and not sat in the local Barclay's vault.