Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 20 April 2012

20 April 2012

Mardy Diary writes: Hastily I have unpacked my bags having been alerted to the fact that the season is not yet over in spite of the fact that there is nothing to play for. Oh for the heady days of yonder when we spent the last weeks of the season working out how many goals we needed to score against some play-off contenders or other in order to avoid the impending relegation. Not sure I can quite get used to this games left/season over combination.

That said, Rob Scott reckons that he still wants the team to go out on a high and says they'll still be picking a strong team for the trip to Telford. He then hints that perhaps some fringe players will get a chance to stake a claim - a chance for Makofo to come on, score a hat-trick and secure a three-year extension to his current deal? No. Probably not.

Scott also suggests that Town's poor run of form started with the play-poorly-but-still-win performance against Telford at the end of January. It's certainly true that form dipped a fair bit after that - although the team did notch another couple of wins in early February. It's hard to know what changed, really: there were a couple of injuries to players who had been part of the revival - notably Artus - but one player can't make that much of a difference.

Perhaps it was just the better quality of the opposition, and with Town facing teams above them in the table they were shown that they aren't quite there yet, despite the high-scoring games against teams at the other end of the table. Some people claimed tiredness or fatigue from too many games - but I don't buy that. Firstly, we're a professional full-time club that put emphasis on fitness at the beginning of the season. Secondly, it was only a week or so before that when players/managers were saying that when you're winning you just want to keep playing. I also apply the rule of Paul Groves in this situation: have you played 68 games this season? No? Then how can you possibly be tired?

Of course it would have been a factor of all of these things and more. Not forgetting that it also coincided with the goodwill the club had built with the winning run being thoughtlessly pissed down the drain by non-chairman Fenty and his blackmailing of the trust. Just saying, like...