Cod Almighty | Diary

Here life is a single wasp surveying the rim of a half-sunk can

17 February 2014

Well, I never saw Tom Finney play, Burnsy, but he was obviously amazing.

Welcome to an irregular Monday with your original/regular Diary, wondering what I'm going to write about Cambridge. Gary Lineker famously said it was more entertaining to watch Wimbledon on Ceefax than from the stands. Now if I were wearing a hat, I'd take it off to the 1,023 Town fans who turned up in person to see our heroes eke out a 2-1 defeat in the first leg of their FA Trophy semi-final on Saturday. But, similarly to Lineker's experience of Wimbledon, I'm fairly happy with the choice I made to watch it using Twitter and text messages while pottering around Hunters Bar and Ecclesall Library.

I'm assuming Leicester's favourite crisp salesman was referring to the south London football team in their long-ball Premier League heyday. And not the grand slam lawn tennis tournament held annually at the All England Club since 1877. Although given the way tennis seems to be heading, perhaps there's not much to choose between a 140mph serve from Milos Raonic and a big welly down the pitch from Dave Beasant.

Veteran CA match reporter Mr Tony Butcher has described Town's awful display at the Abbey as their worst since the pasting we received at Halifax back in the autumn, when Owen Paterson still had a political reputation and Rob 'Shouty' Scott was still in limbo. I'm more than a little baffled by the changes Scott's successor made to the starting line-up, given the lack of game time enjoyed by his first-choice XI recently. As the Byrds once sang from the book of Ecclesiastes, there's a time to rest Ross Hannah and a time to play Andy Cook, but the Diary is far from convinced that this was it.

Even if Town's season starts to unravel a little sooner than we've become accustomed to – and that's still a big 'if' at this stage – let us not fall into the trap of calling for another change in the dug-out. The line between promotion and not-promotion is even finer in the Conference Premier than elsewhere. Another kneejerk managerial dismissal would set the Mariners back two more years, regardless of which next poor sap gets the job.

Fortunately, the GTFC hierarchy appear belatedly to have learned the harsh lesson of hire-and-fire rather better than one minor section of the support, who have not learned it at all. Touch wood, the office of the Mariners' manager is no longer reached via a revolving door, and we may finally be approaching an era of stability and progress at the club, rather than panic, chaos and continuing decline. Well, either that or it's just that we don't have a chairman to do the sacking any more.