Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 28 August 2012

28 August 2012

Your Middle-Aged Diary today provides you with alternative opening paragraphs. If you regard yourself as an optimist, please skip to paragraph 1A. Otherwise, please read on.

Paragraph 1 (for regular pessimistic Mariners): I well remember the excited email chatter among the cognoscenti at Cod Almighty Towers in September 2009 after Town had won consecutive matches and looked forward to the visit of already as good as doomed Darlington: "a win could take us up to seventh". Instead, although Darlington played much of the second half with ten men, we still conceded an equaliser (which did not stop Colin Todd becoming a victim of the Grimsby Reaper) and did not win again until March, by which time we were almost as doomed as the Quakers.

Paragraph 1A (for aberrant optimistic Mariners): I well remember the downcast faces as I entered a west London pub on 13 September 1997. Town had, at the seventh time of asking, recorded their first win of the season, but you wouldn't have known it. The victory at Fulham owed a lot to resolute defence, a bit to luck and hardly anything to a positive game plan. No one was thinking of Wembley.

It's that time of year when a single win, a single performance, has a disproportionate impact on both the league table and the emotions. Read all about it in our mini-report and post-match factfile and join me in reflecting that Rob Scott has this one about right: "I'm not saying we've cracked it by a long stretch - and there's going to be ups and downs before the end of the season".