Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Friday 15 April 2011
15 April 2011
Seventeen years ago that Manchester United played at Port Vale in the cup. Youngsters like Beckham, Scholes and Neville senior were picked for the tie and the local MP threatened United with the Trades Descriptions Act. The type of football generally played in the Conference must get purists muttering in similar vein - but don't get me started on that because your Guest Diarist must take a few moments to ink a couple of minor, yet significant, milestones on Chairman Fentycon's GTFC project plan this morning.
The first, you might say - given that there is still time to laugh it off as a momentary blip - is a cheap shot. Grimsby, after over forty games this season to recover from similar lapses in form, now sit in the bottom half of the table. Again: what we achieved in the old divisions two, three and four with such depressing regularity, we have managed to repeat in non-League football. We've slid downwards again, slowly but just as inexorably.
Oh, it's 'gel time' and systems are in transition after the needless/essential (delete as appropriate) sacking of yet another manager. Don't get me wrong - the last manager's performance results-wise was rubbish. Just like the half-dozen or so who preceded him, who all failed 'miserably' after being given 'loads of time' to chart a new, successful course. A worrying trend, that - all these managers with exciting and experience-laden CVs join the club and instantly become a total disappointment, leaving the chairman with "no option but to begin again".
The superstitious among you might worry that the club, or someone in it, is cursed. Imagine the scene as the old crone croaks at Fenty: "You should have stuck to fish!" before spitting the incantation at the bewildered tie-wiggling Tory, who then finds himself with a mouth full of incoherent, idiotic junior management phrases and a club that fails to thrive however much he spends on it.
The second milestone, of course, is that over the last few matches Grimsby Town have officially and finally completed the horrible metamorphosis in to a non-League club. This is not a temporary spell in purgatory, gentle reader: the descent into hell is complete.
"Class doesn't tell here," said Bryan Hughes to himself as he hobbled off with a fortuitous recurrent Achilles problem. Grim-faced fans have shaken their heads sadly at the new shape, the new tactics, the 'oh-so-necessary' measures 'to prosper in this league'. The players have tried to adapt but most look as limp, as diffident, as horribly out of time as the audience dancers on old Top of the Pops repeats. Will the attendance tomorrow, after three home games in eight days, sink below two thousand? Were there even actually two thousand there on Wednesday night?
But, you might blurt indignantly, we are a big club for this league and we have pots of money behind us. Nonetheless, the 'customer experience' is now decidedly non-League from a footballing point of view.
What will be the season ticket price structure for next season? We cynical Cod Almighty types anticipate a triumphal launch announcement that will remind us that prices "have been frozen for the third season in a row". But we are a mid-table non-League club which plays less and less attractive football. The brand is devalued, the sell-by date approaches, the price should come down.
And, a few games in, the replacement style doesn't seem to be really working. The win ratio is stubbornly stuck at 0 per cent. The players' feet have got stuck in the gel. Time to get some more players, then. Whose name is worth putting on the back of a replica shirt these days? How many folk are going to stump up for the new home shirt and a season ticket next season?
But Mr Kempson's season is over already - he has, in the modern parlance, done his metatarsal. The managers, at the time of writing, haven't faced the superb new official Town website camera to preview tomorrow's match for the customers who paid for this facility. It was the relentless optimism of the interviewer that got to them, I think. The 'we were a bit shit most of the time I suppose, but remember those odd few seconds in the last game when we weren't' line of questioning might draw a grudging nod from Shouty, but he's sick of skirting around the issue - this lot are not big enough, or fast enough. Don't play ugly enough. Don't listen to my screaming rants from the technical area. Don't respond to my half-time ultimatums.
Dave Moore, silent in public these days, keeping his head down and letting the new crew get on with it, has let it be known that Ridley is fit again. Hughes, of course, has almost certainly ended his season; the achilles has hobbled him. It was nice knowing you, Bryan, but the memories, well, there aren't any really - and that's a damn shame. Samuels is still crocked which is a shame too, but Charles 'Charles' Ademeno has finally finished the delayed suspension necessitated by his idiotic behaviour in a reserve game. I hear he was 'really bright' in training while suspended but, sadly, it is the Ademeno thigh's turn to prevent the ambitious thinks-he's-a-speedster playing any part tomorrow.
It's Bath at home, by the way. Bath City, who beat us away, and who are above us in the table. Now there's something to play for - revenge over Bath and a chance to overtake them in the table. That 13th spot is surely ours more than theirs, eh? A club this size... nah, you are right - we won't win again any time soon, will we? Enjoy the football, if there is any. See yer.