Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 15 January 2013

15 January 2013

It's Tuesday, a day when, in the absence of a midweek match, the Telegraph is left scraping around for ways to keep you entertained: your Middle-Aged Diary knows the feeling. It actually does a pretty fair job of it today. After a switch into pidgin English for "Reserves returnLambs boss gone" and the weekly plug for the Century Club, it runs a thoughtful interview with Graham Rodger looking forward to our FA Trophy quarter-final by looking back on Town's 7-1 victory over Luton. That was 16 years ago. Town's 1-0 win at Goodison, remembered by Graham Precious, was 28 years ago.

That was the last time we played Everton in a competitive match. We were reflecting on it a few years back in CA Towers when someone worked out that there is only one team among the top 92 with whom our last encounter is even further into the past. It's not worth leaving that as a quiz question, as the name of the team we have gone longest without meeting is fairly easy to guess. I'll give you until the end of this diary entry.*

Twitter reveals that Radio Humberside was last night discussing favourite goalkeepers. A few years ago, I rediscovered through my son a favourite book from my own childhood, Goalkeepers are Different by Brian Glanville. Written in the early 70s, it's an authentic-seeming story of a young keeper's rise through the ranks, bringing home the essential loneliness of the position, the potential for mistakes to magnify themselves in the mind as he waits for his next share of action, leading to further errors.

It's enough to make you reflect that, while you may root for keepers you suspect may not be quite up to the job (Paul Reece?), to give them stick is particularly criminal. Rhys Wilmot played much of his short, unhappy spell at Blundell Park with a back injury no doubt exacerbated by the fact that this was the part of the anatomy which the Pontoon was particularly keen to ascend. Jason Pearcey was thrown at a young age into a side short of confidence. Anthony Williams probably had some excuse as well.

There is a difference between favourite, the players you really root for, and best, especially among number 1s. Aidan Davison, in his first spell at Blundell Park, was probably the best Town goalkeeper I have seen. It is sometimes said that the truly great saves are the ones made when you have already anticipated the goal. Jim Montgomery's save from a rebound in the 1973 FA Cup final is a case in point. Watching a re-run of highlights some years later, and having, I thought, a fairly vivid memory of the match, there was time for me to think: "That's odd, I don't remember a goal being disallowed," before Montgomery picked himself up and turned the shot from the edge of the goal area around the post. Davison you never expected to concede, so that somehow his best moments fade from memory while the frequent, spectacular and vital saves made by Steve Sherwood and Danny Coyne were given added excitement by the element of relief.

My head therefore says Davison. My heart inclines towards Sherwood and Coyne, before taking a detour via Crichton (his clearances added a random quality to Buckley's attempts to build the school of science). It somehow sidesteps Nigel Batch, for whom I have a blind spot, and finally lands at the first goalkeeper I remember, Harry Wainman.

*The Football League (undevalued money) side we have gone longest without playing is Manchester United. The Cod Almighty results database says we last played them on 17 March 1948.