Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 21 April 2009

21 April 2009

The sun is out, the sky is blue, Town are taking a lot of fans to Bournemouth, and there's not a cloud to spoil the view unless you support Rochdale. Our universally admired and superb new official website reports today that the club has already shifted around half of the Mariners' initial allocation of 1,000 tickets for this weekend's potentially decisive game at Dean Court, and may have to take another 300. Cor!

Meanwhile in deepest Lancashire our old friend Tom Newey is continuing to weave his special brand of magic with his new mates at Spotland. The player's arrival at then promotion-chasing Rochdale last month 'coincided' with a shock 3-0 defeat at Chesterfield which left manager Keith Hill bemused by his side's lack of appetite, and as the Newey effect has continued Dale have all but dropped out of contention for a top-three finish. Cod Almighty's Mark Stilton has done some number-crunching and the statistics are as follows.

GTFC with Newey: W14%, D32%, L54% - 1.05 goals scored per game, 1.70 conceded, 24% of possible points won
GTFC after Newey: W57%, D14%, L29% - 1.57 goals scored per game, 0.57 conceded, 62% of possible points won

Rochdale before Newey: W47%, D26%, L26% - 1.71 goals scored per game, 1.18 conceded, 56% of possible points won
Rochdale with Newey: W17%, D33%, L50% - 0.67 goals scored per game, 2.00 conceded, 28% of possible points won

Just to season the raw data with a little empiricism, Dale's latest defeat - two-nil at home to Roll Over Darlington with nothing to play for - has prompted another confused outburst from Keith Hill: "All of a sudden around the place there is a sense of underachievement, and that's wrong. I've been sensing that for quite a while and the players have, and it's wrong." So had we, Keith. So had we.

Grimsby Town are a struggling fourth division side with minimal support, technically insolvent and based in a singularly unattractive town that has failed to recover from the death of the industry it depended upon for the best part of a century. Queens Park Rangers are located in affluent west London; going by the resources available to their owners they are the wealthiest football club in the world, and Trevor Sinclair is the only Englishman alive who has ever looked good with dreadlocks. Tonight the two clubs' youth sides meet in a rich v poor Youth Alliance Cup final at... Loftus Road, the home of Queens Park Rangers, who have been given home advantage because they have more money than us. Good luck, Town - and remember those QPR lads know you've never seen a 50 pound note, so beware when they wave a few wads of them at you to distract you from the game.

Pete Brooksbank has emailed the Diary over last week's crap extended metaphor whereby I likened Paul Bolland's failure to reproduce consistently the excellent form of his first season for Town to pop bands who put out a good first album and then a string of rubbish ones. "Whilst I would wholeheartedly concur that many a good band has suffered an alarming sophomore slump," begins Pete, "I would contend this wasn't actually the case with Le Tigre, since their first effort was a big pile of dogshit too. It was, in my humble opinion, one of those albums with one decent track ('Hot Topic') made big off the back of a shitstorm of hype, mainly driven by Hanna's enduring legacy as poster-girl for the Riot Grrrrl movement and, let's face it, her status as member of the 'Cobain's Ex' club." Well, I readily concede that Le Tigre may not have gained the attention they did without the presence of Kathleen Hanna, but to connect this in large part to the Cobain phenomenon is, at best, to downplay Hanna's own epic talent; some might go further in averring that this leans towards the deplorable rockist misogyny that informs the Courtney Love hate. Far more importantly than that, 'Deceptacon' is fucking ace, man!

"Anyway," continues Pete, "moving back on to matters football-related, I was passing Meadow Lane last week on my way to a pub, the day after your game there, and spotted this (attached). I thought you'd appreciate the photo as evidence that it isn't just your lot who are prone to public and humiliating manglings of the English language." The photo Pete attached is below.

Ah, that old chestnut. Thanks, PB - it's always good!

That's all from today's Diary, but incidentally, Pete, if you're around in Nottingham this Friday then one member of the Cod Almighty team strongly recommends you attend a gig. He might even be DJ-ing the next night as well, so he could spin a bit of Le Tigre specially!