Cod Almighty | Diary

Shall I compare thee to three points on Saturday?

27 February 2025

Rónán Hession's novel Panenka begins: "His name was Joseph, but for many years they had called him Panenka, a name that was his sadness and his story." From there, it is hardly a spoiler to say that Joseph missed a penalty in a crucial game for his home-town club. The football is mainly off-stage, but it is a fair imagining of how it must feel to play in a one-club town when both have known better times. James McKeown, who loved us enough to deliver some home truths now and again, might nod feelingly at the picture of how frustration turns into venom, concentrated on a footballer who tries something which goes wrong.

In the second half last Saturday, Jason Svanthórsson won possession in a tight spot deep on the right. He might have been tempted to clear for touch, or boot it downfield; Newbegin Diary was certainly tempted to yell him that advice. Instead he took a touch to beat his man, but the ball ran away from him so Fleetwood renewed their attack. Nothing came from it, but it could have cost us two points. Or it might have seen Grimsby launch a fluent counter-attack to make sure of the win.

I had been wondering whether Town had really changed since the days of Paul Hurst, so mediocre was most of the football on display, and there was my answer. We are trying to do something different, like a floated penalty that stays with you decades after it was taken. It is riskier, and sometimes it goes badly wrong, but sometimes it goes wonderfully right.

On Saturday, it felt like we were watching so many monkeys with typewriters. It was almost all gibberish, yet we were waiting for the complete works of Shakespeare to emerge. But the comparison ignores how many quills and parchments Shakespeare got through before he completed his work. The scribbles, from "You are a bit of a looker, you are", through "Seeing you fills me with sunshine", were tossed with disgust into the Avon or the Thames, until at last he came up with "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" In sport, we are watching our artists at work, hoping but not knowing that eventually their labours will be rewarded.

Also, Shakespeare didn't have someone shoving his shoulder, joggling his wrist and grabbing him around the neck whenever he rose to meet a soaring figure of speech. Despite everything that Fleetwood were doing to stop them, the Mariners were able to settle the game with two magical moments: first a superb strike; and then, when the combined centuries of lower-league wisdom screamed to "Get it in the mixer", a short free-kick routine, executed with ice-cold precision. On a pitch relaid as a peat bog.

Leaving aside Craig's feats, William Shakespeare couldn't write Hamlet on a cold Tuesday night at Blundell Park. If Town didn't quite manage that, we did at least knock out a couple of sonnets.