Cod Almighty | Diary

All's well that ends well

3 March 2025

Miss Guest Diary writes: Back in September I chided Town fans for describing the home game against Bromley – the seventh of the league season – as a "must win", and suggested that Saturday's game at Cheltenham was the earliest time for such talk. Back then I didn't anticipate that by now we would be entertaining thoughts of the play-offs rather than dreading the drop. As David Artell might say, in fact has said, there's bumps in the road, but finally Town seem to be successfully negotiating them. Games are now "could win", sometimes even "should win", but none of them feel like a "must".

Regardless of Town's position in the league, we had always intended to go to Cheltenham in what, to borrow a phrase from Samuel Johnson, some might see as a triumph of hope over experience. Our three previous visits to the [Insert Sponsor's Name Here] Stadium had all resulted in defeat, with barely a sniff of a point for Town, so Saturday's draw was fine by me. And, leaving aside the one-eyed performance of the ref and the non-league barging and hoofing of the opposition, everything else was fine too in the end.

I am a meticulous planner of away days but Saturday's plan quickly unravelled when we missed our scheduled comfort break because the expected roundabout turned out to be a flyover. The curse of a satnav which doesn't have automatic updates. No matter though, because there was an equivalent – maybe even slightly better – coffee shop just 30 minutes further on.

There was hardly any traffic on the roads, so the next glitch came when we arrived at our planned parking destination much earlier than anticipated and fell foul of the four-hour parking limit. Being forced to look elsewhere we found several streets even closer to the ground with no parking restrictions at all. Result!

A tentative plan to meet up before the game with a couple of lads flying in from Dublin failed when their confusion at the proliferation of platforms at Birmingham New Street meant they didn't arrive in time. Never mind – the optimism of youth had led them to book a return flight too early for them to be sure of making it to the airport from Cheltenham by train, so we gave them a lift to Coventry station. Thus we were able to have the pleasure of their company for an hour and the satisfaction of doing them a favour, all at the expense of about five miles and 15 minutes on our journey home. Lovely!

And then Town saved a penalty and came back from 1-0 down to earn a more than deserved point. Hurrah! 

The dictionary defines serendipity as "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way", and perfectly sums up my experience on Saturday.

If only all away days could go so well. But, on reflection, I feel we need the horror shows like the near-drowning at Bromley in 2021, or bra-gate at Stevenage in 2017, or the play-off final disappointments in 2006 and 2015 to bind us together. Bonds built in adversity feel stronger than those made in the good times. Which is not to devalue the joy and camaraderie of Town's successful play-off campaigns or to say that I wouldn't like to repeat the experience this season.

UTM