Cod Almighty | Diary

Shut up Townsend

13 June 2014

Mardy Diary writes: Ah, the World Cup, isn't it? Jumpers for goalposts, Mexican waves, pretty girls on camera, rolling on the floor, telling a ref to book a player, wafting your arm in another player's face, hmmm? Lovely. Isn't it? Painted faces, singing and dancing, unnecessary use of technology to determine if a ball is over the line, the referee carrying a fucking spray can to spray a bastard line on the bollocksing pitch for absolute fucking, fuckety-fucks sake. Ah.

Still, Croatia briefly showed that there is still fun to be had. I'm not down with this modern habit of over-idolising the 'good' teams like Brazil. I prefer the cause of the underdog, the jammy wins, the fluke goals, the 'your boys took one hell of a beating' games. Is it the great games that stick in the mind or the great incidents?

For me, the World Cup memory that still sticks in my mind is the opening match in 1990 between Argentina and Cameroon. Cameroon clinging on to a single-goal lead when Caniggia breaks down the right. He rides one challenge, he just avoids a second but is slightly unbalanced. Then BOOOOM! The third challenge makes no mistake, as Cannigia is booted out of the stadium and into a neighbouring country. Massing takes a bullet for his country, and I laugh like a bastard. Massing - I salute you, sir. 

Of course if it happened to Town I'd be outraged - but that's the joy of football, the balance of the good, the bad and the outrageous. We take the rough with the smooth, and we debate the incidents for weeks without recourse to slow motion replays from every conceivable angle. Things go for you, things go against you, c'est la vie.

And talking of Town, I must dash: need to work out costs of purchasing season tickets. Already I'm getting caught up in the excitement surrounding the coming season. What could possibly go wrong?