Cod Almighty | Diary

This too shall pass

9 May 2022

Miss Guest Diary writes: Now we are so close to the end of the season and challenging for promotion, every game played by Town or one of our near rivals can feel life-or-death. Which makes it all the stranger that Saturday's defeat to Maidenhead after Luke Waterfall's two-minute meltdown was greeted with a smile and a shrug by a fair number of fans, myself included. As Paul Hurst said, apart from those two minutes, he couldn't criticise the players. I agree. Apart from those two minutes, it was an entertaining game and Town were by far the better team.

Though not according to those BT Sport pundits, of course. Apparently Maidenhead "started the game on the front foot" and Town are "limping into the play-offs". This despite being unbeaten since 22 March, winning six and drawing two of the previous eight games. I'm really starting to get a chip on my shoulder about our BT coverage.

Meanwhile BT darlings, Stockport County – whose last three games have all been shown live – continue their meltdown. They really should have been three up in the first 20 minutes yesterday but were let down by poor shooting. They managed to lose 3-0 to a Wrexham side whose only tactic seems to be "stick it in the mixer", mostly via the long throws of Tozer the Tosser. Much as I would like to see Stockport get automatically promoted ahead of the Hollywood Hurlers, should Town get far enough in the play-offs to come up against the second-placed team, I'd fancy our chances more against the one which actually tries to pass the ball.

If you ever want a reminder about the cyclical nature of life in general, and football in particular, then head on over to Twitter and follow @onthisGTFCday. Yesterday we had the relegations at Tranmere and Burton in 2004 and 2010 contrasted with the play-off semi-final victory at Braintree in 2016 and the Town Hall celebrations in 1990 following promotion to the third tier. Today we have the first leg of the play-offs against Fulham in 1998 which saw Town reach Wembley and secure a return to the second division to contrast with relegation in 1987. This saw the sacking of Mike Lyons and, following a further relegation, eventually led to the first Buckley era. So it wasn't all bad.

Our esteemed chair has once again been writing in The Guardian, this time ruminating about the lack of a level playing field, both in life and in football, where individuals and teams are "often successful at least in part due to the advantages of their birth and the systems they are born into." He has hopes that the recent fan-led football review might help to level things up with regulation to "enforce a better flow of funding throughout the football pyramid, for a broader definition of who can be owners and directors of football clubs and for greater fan involvement in decisions that affect the future viability of clubs." That would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath.

So, it's on to the Boring Wood game tomorrow. Surely we should be able to get a point against a team that has won only two of their last 15 games. Oh, I forgot, it's Town – that’s exactly the sort of team we lose to. UTM anyway.