Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 29 January 2013

29 January 2013

Your Middle-Aged Diary cannot be at Blundell Park tonight, but that's fine. I can imagine the scene.

Proceedings will commence with President Fenty making a speech of welcome to our visitors, his stirring proclamation "Ich bin ein Lutoner" bringing the whole crowd to their feet. The players and staff of Grimsby Town will come out of the tunnel first, to form a guard of honour as the Luton players take the field over the red carpet laid on for them and the Pontoon sings, with one voice: "For they are jolly good fellows." The dentists and doctors in the Main Stand will provide a buzz of approval ("Well done sirs, you have done the Conference proud") and even the habitues of the Upper Frozen Fish/Frozen Beer Stand will honour the occasion by tearing themselves out of McMenemy's in time for the kick-off. The match itself will be played in good spirit, with the crowd applauding good play by both sides alike, occasionally breaking their rapt attention to the action to call on Scott Neilson, watching from the stands, to give them a wave.

Something like that.

Coverage of the FA Cup has actually improved now its broadcasting rights have been separated from those for the Premiership. For years, it was bedevilled by propagandists disguised as pundits, a smuggery of studio shirts neglecting analysis to maintain the charade that the "Premier League is the best in the world", that all domestic football below that level is substandard and that if a top-flight side should lose, it proves only that they no longer take the cup seriously. Bradford's League Cup success last week was refreshingly free of that cant, and Oldham's victory on Sunday was the most stirring bit of televised sport I've seen in a long time, Liverpool's desperation in the final half-hour giving the lie to anyone who tried to say it did not matter.

Nevertheless, it is not until you support a non-League team that you realise just how patronising is the media coverage of "cupsets", with its assumption that below a certain level, the game is played in a vague cloud of friendly matches for small prizes without rivalry, now and again projecting to national attention a team somehow representative not of themselves but of their whole level. There is an element of truth to the cliché that Luton's success is good for the Conference, but above all it is good for Luton. The supporters of Luton's rivals will inevitably view the events at Carrow Road last Saturday through the prism of their own interests, and of whatever disputes with the club we may have worked up over the last couple of weeks.

Tonight, the prize is a two-legged FA Trophy semi-final against either Dartford or Halifax, with Paul Hurst suggesting the extra matches might require further additions to our squad, while not sounding too enthusiastic about the potential signings on offer. Rob Scott expects Andy Cook will be fit to play but hints at changes from the side that drew at Cambridge to avoid suspensions.

In the meantime, is it just me viewing Luton through that prism of rivalry that reads into Paul Buckle's comment "Neilson is no. It would have been great to have him but it's not to be" an implication that the Mariners are to blame for the regulations concerning when players become cup-tied?