The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

I'm gonna pop a wheelie now

10 May 2016

Your original/regular Diary watched Sunday's match at Braintree on telly in the pub. I was with Mardy Diary. We were borderline delirious. Town played well, never gave up, and fully deserved the win. And yet, when we looked around, we were surprised to see that the other fans in the room didn't seem to share our excitement. It was almost as if they were watching a different game. And then it turned out that they were. The other screen was showing Spurs v Southampton in the Premier League.

But the same thing happened when we looked at Twitter to see what other Town fans were saying. They weren't watching Spurs v Southampton – but they might as well have been.

At half time, Mardy and I were feeling pretty chipper. The switch to 4-3-3 had actually worked. The first ten minutes aside, it seemed to us, the Mariners had dominated the match and mostly used their possession well, chipping away at the Conference's toughest defence, and creating chances. Carry on like that and it would be just a matter of time until we scored.

 

We were about the only people who thought so. Every other Town fan on Twitter seemed beyond fury. Not only should Paul Hurst have been sacked before the second half kicked off: every supporter who had ever defended him should have been eviscerated over hot coals and their pets used as pigeon feed. To look back now, you wouldn't know it – you know that old saying: many a word tweeted in anger is hastily deleted when you realise you've made a bit of a tit of yourself. But to us, it was astonishing. There are always different perspectives, but I'd never witnessed so stark and dramatic a discrepancy between my understanding of a match and the way it was being seen by other people.

I guess there were potentially distorting influences on both sides. If Town didn't score, then we wouldn't get promoted, which would have been a shame. We all want Town to get promoted. Perhaps some people want it so much that they go a bit mad. And perhaps this changes the way you see things. Black becomes white, white becomes black, and a strong but goalless first half becomes the opening of the Hellmouth.

Mardy and I may not have been entirely objective either. His default mindset vis-a-vis the Mariners is perhaps best characterised as one of militantly contrarian optimism. Let's face it: Grimbarians are a set of resolutely miserable bastards regardless of whether misery is warranted. Mardy's mission in life (and here's the irony in his nickname) is to defy the reflex pessimism in his genes and present the other possibility whenever possible – that the world might not, after all, be about to consumed in blazing brimstone if the ball goes out of play from Toto's clearance.

So perhaps I was soaking up a little of Mardy's positivity and seeing the game in a slightly better light than a neutral might have. Or perhaps I was just soaking up a bit too much strong beer. It was a hot day.

I know what you're thinking here – you're thinking, hey, original/regular Diary, you're being hard on yourself now. You turned out to be right. Your determination to be fair here reflects beautifully on you as a human being. But give yourself a break. You're thinking that, but I couldn't possibly comment. It's not that all my impressions were correct. I was surprised to see, when uploading Tony Butcher's match report last night, that there were only 15 minutes left when Podge levelled the tie. It seemed far more comfortable than that. I'd have guessed 20 or so.

So it's clearly not just that I'm right and the rest of you are idiots. And even if that were true, I wouldn't believe it. The main thing is we're all Town. We're off to Wembley and we're all Town. We've sold 7,000 tickets in the first day of sales. Dean Walling from Lincoln thinks Forest Green's wealth has "made the wage structure a bit skewered". And if we do beat them on Sunday, Paul Hurst is 1/4 favourite to fill this week's managerial vacancy at Notts County. So everyone will be happy. See you in north-west London, comrades.