Cod Almighty | Diary

Just because we have fluid identities, it doesn't mean we can't hope Town thrash Lincoln

9 September 2014

Sporting identity is a funny, fluid thing.

Today, your Middle-Aged Diary is keeping an eye on the cricket scores. I am one Mariner who does not hate Yorkies. Yorkshire, the county of my mother's birth, the county in which my father received most of his education, are within a few bonus points and a draw of claiming the County Championship.

Tonight, I'll be keeping a close eye on the European qualifiers. The country in which I received all my education appears to have a realistic chance of qualifying for a major tournament for the first time since 1958. Wales's qualification record is both better and worse than that. The Principality's appearance in the 1958 World Cup final owed a lot to countries boycotting Israel. On the other hand, the current team will have to go some to match the achievements of the 1976 team which, when the European Championships had a different format, reached the last eight. Our own Jack Lewis played a crucial role, of course. It was his energetic warming-up that inspired Arfon Griffiths to score the only goal in the final qualifier.

I'm sort of Welsh, but was actually born in Hertfordshire, so cannot work up quite the same invective against the English football team that you'd expect of a proper fire-breathing Taff. My son, who does regard himself as English, could not be bothered to watch them last night. He supports Man City, and he supports the countries who his favourite players play for.

I suspect the current fashionable swing of opinion against England is in part a press-fuelled movement intended to further entrench the Premiership and all it stands for. Against that backdrop, I find myself watching England with more sympathy now than I've wanted to muster since I migrated from being an Englishman living in Wales to a sort-of Welshman living in England. Yes, the new European Championship and its qualifying tournament are ludicrously bloated, but at least it's only once every four years (and at least it means Wales might feature). The European club tournaments, with entry rules guaranteeing the wealthy a place at the table, take over our week nights every fortnight, every year.

All this is to say that, as a scarcely even second-generation Grimbarian, who lives the far side of the Pennines from Lincolnshire, you can expect me to take a rational view of tonight's game at Sincil Bank. "It's only three points," you can expect me to write.

Except... although I do not know any Lincoln supporters, still less see any who can be expected to crow over me if Town lose, there is some deep, irrational, atavistic instinct in me that would sacrifice a couple of other matches if it was the price of the Mariners winning tonight. Part of me hopes that Paul Hurst and the playing squad are not working on that principle. The other part can only type "#LINCSCUMBUMTITTY".