Cod Almighty | Article

by Mark Wilson

28 July 2006

Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all
Or if he moves will he fall?
Is he 'live or dead?
Has he thoughts within his head?
We'll just pass him there,
Why should we even care?
Heavy boots of lead
Drills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can,
Iron Man lives again.

Little did Ozzy Osbourne know that when he wrote the lyrics to 'Iron Man', sometime in 1969 or so, he would be penning a prescient summary of Ben Futcher's first half-season with Town. Arriving in a whirlwind of legendary-dad-related euphoria, accompanied by good reports from all who had seen him at Lincoln and providing us with absolute proof that Steve Evans is an idiot, hopes were high that Son of Futch was a top-class acquisition by Sort It (remember him?).

Oh ye gods, what a letdown he turned out to be. His early performances were so shaky that you wondered if he was going to break into a rendition of 'Green Door'. Injury to Justin Whittle also meant that we had to rely on him to form a partnership with Rob Jones that frankly required the Stick to play George Michael to Futcher's Andrew Ridgeley. When Whittle became officially uncrocked the partnership was put back together like Elton and Bernie Taupin leaving Futch to scratch around for a tune elsewhere.

Then disaster struck late in the season as the Stick took his turn on the treatment table with Futch trying to make sweet music alongside Whittle. The partnership reminded me of the Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker version of 'You're The One That I Want': you wanted to laugh along but somehow you couldn't. The nadir of this period was the away draw in the crucial game at Macclesfield, when Futcher somehow managed to be dazzled by the donkey Macc had up front and allowed him to equalise within a nanosecond of us taking the lead.

And then... and then... the ugly duckling turned into a swan (all right, I'm pushing it a bit, I know). Cometh the play-offs, cometh the man. A towering performance at Sincil Bank, where he appeared to want to break some of his former colleagues in half, was followed by a very good display in the return leg (I can't comment too knowledgeably on this, as I was listening on a digital radio secreted in my dinner suit at a black tie do, and wine had been taken) and a decent performance at Cardiff – well, as good as anybody other than Parky really.

Thus, he seems to have achieved the almost impossible and got the Town faithful to give him another chance next season. Messageboards and pub discussions have been awash with comments like "Jones was shit when he joined us", "nobody fancied his dad when he came from Halifax reserves" and "maybe as first choice he'll relish the responsibility and relax a bit". He will have to rid himself of some baggage as well: he's the archetypal Slade defender and if we are going to play proper football this season he won't get away with his favoured hoof out of defence. On the positive side, in the early part of the season he won't be the automatic first choice for abuse; we have Peter Beagrie for that.

He has good points. He is very tall (6' 7") and that makes him good at heading corners and free kicks away. He is a more than proficient tackler when he times them right. And he's weighed in with a few goals from set pieces (three in 18 appearances last season). He's also youngish (25) and can still learn from a manager and a dad who used to be centre-halves. And he works hard. Don't scoff at working hard being a positive in a footballer; just remember the workshy idiots we had under Law (except Rankin!).

So, what of his prospects for 2006-07? Is he to flourish with Whitts and bring us a Lennon and McCartney partnership, or will he turn out to be the Gary Barlow of Cleethorpes? My guess is that if he starts well and the boo boys keep their focus on Beagrie, he will do a decent job and prove that he used the play-offs to show his real value, not just rising to the occasion. If Grezza is really going to take us back to the beautiful days of yore then Futch's best hope is that he is employed as the 'muscle' doing the donkey work and Whitts is allowed to be the ball player in the middle. If he's expected to start doing the silky passing on the floor stuff, his distribution last season suggests that he won't be here after January.

Of course, there is another option. I write in July with the temperature outside making my corner of Hertfordshire more like the Atacama desert than Britain, so Grezzer has more than enough time to buy one or more extra centre-halves and make the two hours I've just spent writing this an utter waste of time.