Cod Almighty | Diary

The mouldy cherry on the cake

10 March 2017

Retro Diary writes: Last week's defeat to Wycombe left a bad taste, which still hasn't completely gone away. It wasn't just losing that was the problem – after all, we do that all the time. Seeing someone – from either team – knocked out and puking in the penalty area doesn't lead to the most celebratory Saturday evening either. But Gunners is going to be OK, we think, and neither was that the reason.

The irritation was that Wycombe were absolute crap, and looked like they wouldn't score if they played until Tuesday. And somehow, we managed to find a way of giving them not one but two goals – the first a freak own goal, the other courtesy of the ref. This gave them a victory they had neither the talent nor the ensuing grace to deserve. The mouldy cherry on the cake was our inability to finish them off, or at least salvage an annoying draw. To be honest, organisationally we looked a bit of a mess. Read this in addition to Tony Butcher, Bob Blake, Matt Dannatt and Rich Lord. We are, at this club, absolutely spoiled for match reports.

It's funny really, because on that day's fixture list, ours wasn't the game you most expected to end in acrimony, with those two contemptible showers Cheltenham and Mansfield playing each other at the World of Smile. You might guess that a manager would get sent off in that game, and indeed he was, but it wasn't the one you'd expect.

Defender and resident Chelts nutcase Kyle Storer (the one who's already been suspended for eight games for biting Bradley Wood) went in for a tackle which one could describe as "recklessly solid". It left his opponent Jamie McGuire writhing on the ground and doing that slapping the turf thing of someone who's in agony. This happened just yards from both managers and the linesman. The lino assured Chelts manager Gary Johnson that he'd seen the tackle and it was fair. Indeed, in his own out of control way, Storer did actually get the ball.

In the ensuing melee, another Mansfield player trod on Storer's leg while he was down. Out came the red card for Storer, and up jumped formerly-moribund turf-slapper McGuire, right as rain, with his stamping mate nowhere to be seen. That was followed shortly afterwards by Johnson (who would never, as we know, preside over a team of divers or stampers), having a hissy fit and being dismissed to the stands. Ever-angelic Steve Evans, as you might expect, blamed everyone except his own players and remained self-righteously cool on the touchline.

Ten-man Cheltenham held out 74 minutes for a 0-0 draw and treated it like winning the cup final. Storer, predictably, lost his appeal and so serves an extra game. Quite plainly, these two teams deserve each other. And I'm a whisker from suggesting that Wycombe can join them in the same undistinguished company.

So tell me: is the referee’s assistant supposed to assist the referee or not? In our Wycombe game, the ref seemed incapable of making any decision without reassurance from his lino, even waiting for his approval to give the world's most obvious penalty. In the Cheltenham game, the linesman, by contrast, shrunk away like a salted snail.

Tomorrow, the points are more or less irrelevant to Town, but psychologically it's a must-win. Our friends Orient won't be any better than Wycombe; indeed they may be worse. Our ability, or not, to ease past them will be watched with interest, and if we can't, it might be the final farewell to the goodwill of recent years.

Having said that, we don't really want troubled Orient to go down, and after wishing them the very worst of luck for one day only, we hope they go on an unprecedented winning streak, raise the money they need to save the club, and commit some less-deserving outfit to the abyss. Their fans have crowdfunded more than £60,000 in just five days this week, but must raise more than four times that to pay their club's tax bill.

Elsewhere in the capital, there’s an odd-looking encounter going on as Arsenal take on Lincoln. Arsenal at first wanted to allocate Lincoln fans a mere 5,000 tickets for the game, but were forced by competition rules to make it just under 9,000, with the stipulation that tickets must go only to Lincoln fans whose names and addresses already appear on club databases. This basically meant that only season ticket holders and participants in various other membership schemes could get tickets for the Lincoln section.

The result, as you'd expect, was exactly the same problem that happened with Town's away game at Donny, with each eligible person maxing out on available tickets and giving them to a miscellany of undeserving mates, leaving a grand total of zero left to go on general sale. Some very long-standing and well-travelled fans will miss out, with exiles, as always, particularly hard hit. This will result in a fair few Lincoln die-hards sitting watching it at home, and more still in with the Arsenal fans. They needn't worry, mind – the Arsenal seats will be evacuated as soon as their inhabitants' mochalattes are empty, or the sun goes in. Indeed, it seems more likely that - given the gross inequality on the pitch - the game will finish with not a fan from either side anywhere in sight.

With his concept of "peaceful aggression", Igor Lebedev elegantly puts the moron back in oxymoron

World news, and Russian MP Igor Lebedev has made the intriguing suggestion that in the upcoming World Cup, hooliganism should be legalised and made into a spectator sport. Yes, really. This is almost certainly a reaction to the fact that Russia can neither solve its own hooligan problem, nor win the actual football. He suggests, rather bizarrely, that 20 unarmed fans from each side should battle it out in an arena in front of an audience, saying that organised brawls "could turn fans' aggression in a peaceful direction". With his concept of "peaceful aggression", Lebedev elegantly puts the moron back in oxymoron. Hey, we could see people getting knocked out and puking all over again. Neat.

Who can forget the 1970s and 80s when following Town away could be a terrifying ordeal? The sound of chipping concrete and the surgical masks at the old Den, for example. Or being kettled by police at Ayresome Park as lumps of wood came flying through the air. Many was the day, in that lost era, that I pondered a new kind of segregation – instead of home and away, we should have 'fighting' and 'non-fighting'. It would cure so much I thought at the time including my own dangerously elevated stress levels. It would definitely be popular with those with a pugilistic bent and a natural antipathy to the nanny state, as well as non-violent types like myself who could remain firmly rooted to the peaceful side. So actually Lebedev's suggestion is not a new idea, although I've never heard anyone express it and actually mean it before.

In fact, if anything in those bad old days saved you from harm, it was that some battles were pre-organised, and not simply scattergun attacks on random bods in the street. I once had to walk through a pitched battle between Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle fans near Sheffield city centre which calmly parted and let me through. My lack of interest in fighting made me of no interest to them, although they didn't know who I supported. So, Igor: it's been tried, we didn't like it, and the real answer is for you to grow up.

Last night's fans' forum at McMenemy's was a mostly congenial affair, whose atmosphere of happy families seemed to legislate against more aggressive lines of questioning. During the night, we added some modest ornamentation to some of what Donald Rumsfeld would have called "known knowns", but learned rather little of any substance. Oh, except that Town would effectively own their new stadium, and would vote to keep Premier League teams in the Checkatrade Trophy again, as long as those teams were restricted to under-21s, as they originally agreed. Sadly (and I mean that), that'll be another boycott from me then. Being seen as fit only to play the baby teams of clubs that are historically our peers is grossly insulting.

Marcus Bignot confirmed, when asked how he was getting on with moving to the area, that he has moved up, and is enjoying a "cracking deal" at the Humber Royal. Interestingly, he chose to compare his lifestyle there to Home Alone, rather than I'm Alan Partridge.

Anyway, I had a lovely conversation with a spritely and mischievous 85-year-old called Derek who’s been watching Town since the 1930s. He would like to see Fanfare for the Common Man return as the players come out onto the pitch, and frankly, I think that guy should be able to have anything he damn well wants.
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