Cod Almighty | Diary

Gratuitous analogies

4 May 2017

Is it just Middle-Aged Diary or, as our season comes to an end on Saturday, do you feel as though we have been sold short?

It has been a season of beginnings without endings. After all the build-up, all the promises, the Grimsby Town career of Marcus Bignot was a case of premature ejaculation and now we have coitus interruptus after five games of Russell Slade.

Habitually cautious, that we were mathematically safe from relegation with games to spare was all I asked; I don't begrudge a rare mid-table finish. But it does bring home how staggered, and so how fractured, the end of the season is nowadays. Most teams in the third division have already twisted round the notice that reads "On holiday – come back in August", and locked the door behind them. But teams in the top flight still have up to five games left to play.

For teams in the play-offs, the previous 46 matches suddenly seem like little more than a dress rehearsal for the three matches to come. Think back to last season: how many of your most vivid memories are from the play-off semi-final or from Wembley? How much else will you never forget? This year, though, we are the country cousins, getting our coats for the last bus home just as the party gets going.

A mid-table finish should have consolations. We want to feel we are laying foundations for next year. Things will become clearer when contract negotiations take centre stage but in the meantime there is only uncertainty. Our player of the year is out of contract and our young player of the year belongs to another club. One of the season's storylines has been Shaun Pearson re-establishing himself as first choice and making the step up to League football; he'll stay – surely he'll stay – but until it is confirmed, it is hard to look forward to August.

Football isn't the only sport, of course. The cricket season is getting into full swing and there's a Lions tour to look forward to. But football shades from sport into soap opera nowadays, and what TV producer would risk taking a soap off-air for three months? The players need the rest. Normally we need the rest as well. But this season, somehow, there is a little too much left unresolved.