Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 19 November 2007

19 November 2007

Do you want to know the Diary's new theory? I thought of it the other day, while Town were being beaten by Morecambe. It's called the Half Time Against Rochdale Was The Tipping Point Theory. And it goes something like this.

Up until half time against Rochdale in mid-October Town's players had been playing really well all season without winning matches. It has been proven many times, by science and stuff, that this is a stressful and demoralising state of affairs which is fundamentally unstable and can proceed only for a finite period before the pressure caused by unequal forces on the pitch and in the league table causes an implosion. This is precisely what happened halfway through the Rochdale game. In the first half against Rochdale the players played probably their best football so far that season, and they still weren't winning. This was the point at which the implosion occurred, as the players collectively just sort of said "oh, for fuck's sake! GAH!" and lost the heart and will to carry on as before. Since then they've just been too demoralised and pissed off even to continue playing well. So now they're still not winning matches and they're playing shit as well. Except in cup games, where the destabilising pressure exerted by the league table does not apply.

What? What's that you say? That's all very clever, Diary, but how do we reverse the process? Ah. Well, I was just about to come up with that part of the theory when I was distracted by Dave Artell fondling Martin Butler's bum. You know the email address, though.

Anyway. Just before the name of Dave Mulligan slips our minds entirely, let's commemorate a very special achievement by the Scunthorpe full-back. True, Mulligan's loan spell with the Mariners earlier this season is unlikely to be remembered very much more fondly than those of, say, Mark Nicholls or James Lawson, and he may have been utterly useless against Chester City in the English fourth division - but he found his level at the weekend in no less grand a tournament than the World Cup, scoring New Zealand's winning goal after coming on as a second-half substitute as the Kiwis battled bravely back from a 1-0 deficit against the mighty Vanuatu. It is doubtful whether the Iron see Mulligan as the man to consolidate their impressive start to life in the second division - the player still has yet to appear for Scunny's first team this season - but with some home fans at Glanford Park having apparently booed their team off the pitch following a goalless draw against Leicester last month, it's nice to see that a peculiar sense of perspective isn't exclusive to this side of northern Lincolnshire.