Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 12 October 2011

12 October 2011

During the final three years of our Football League tenure your West Yorkshire Diary would have given his right bollock to see Town beat a team 5-2 when the match was, for the most part, evenly balanced. Of course, what tended to happen in those days was that the Mariners would lose - usually to a late goal, maybe two - and we'd all trudge off home wondering if falling into the non-League scene was really going to happen.

So on this non-League evening, when Town's frail defence was again embarrassingly exposed - especially from set pieces - the players at least had the nous to be clinical at the other end, which is a trait not so familiar to the dwindling faithful. However, we're not going to score a hatful of goals every game, and the worry is that our defence is dictating that we need to do just that. It's unsustainable and I'm sure we're all in agreement that as soon as the managers and players work out how to keep clean sheets, watching the Mariners play will become a little less stressful.

For about 75 minutes, listening to the match last night was about as uncomfortable as being Gary Lineker's wife when he asked her for an honest opinion about his embryonic facial hair before going live on the telly. At both 1-1 and 2-2 Barrow were the better side. But again Town bucked their unenviable trend of crumbling by retaking the lead each time. We scored handily on the stroke of half time and survived a difficult period in the second half before the managers made excellent substitutions which effectively won the game.

Liam Hearn shouldn't have to get hat-tricks to cover the mistakes of a defence that is leakier than the Pontoon roof directly over seat M54, but at least we've moved on from those dark days when we couldn't even muster a goal at home - and even when we scored two, we conceded two as well. I guess you could call that progress.

Courtesy of that fifth goal, the Mariners have now scrambled high enough up the Conference table to take a sneaky peek at the top half. We've now scored more goals at home than any other team in the league, yet we have the joint worst strike rate on the road. Hearn's second hat-trick in successive home games is a feat worth mentioning, of course, as is Anthony Elding's ability to claim goals that go in off defenders. But in order to sum up the match, and to put this 5-2 scoreline into some sort of context, how many of us are really expecting a result at York on Saturday? I mean, honestly? They have pace and ex-GTFC players in their side, for Christ's sake.

For those listening to the game, or those who got back home in time to switch on what my grandmother used to call 'the wireless', we were treated to a heart-warming interview with former Mariners midfielder Joe Waters, who was famously brought to the club by the fans who helped raise part of his transfer fee. Now living and coaching in America, Waters spoke fondly of his time at Town and candidly about his recovery from cancer. His anecdotes of George Kerr's managerial style were insightful. He expressed a desire to visit one day and said he would love a reunion with some of his teammates from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Hopefully the interview will resurface somewhere online for all Town fans to hear.

Finally, in response to Phil Watson's email in yesterday's diary regarding kit clashes, my own personal theory as to why the white strip was used at Mansfield is because the white strip was still in its cellophane wrapper from when it was purchased in the summer and someone at the club realised that, as the official away kit for the season, it really should make an appearance. It should have been worn on any number of occasions before Mansfield (take Braintree or Newport, for example - our first two away games of the season), but it wasn't. Maybe we should put a call in to the kit police.