Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 7 November 2011

7 November 2011

Miss Guest Diary writes: I have been feeling nostalgic this weekend - season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, and all that - mainly caused, I suspect, by Town playing at Twerton Park. I wasn't at Saturday's match because Bath is now considered too far to go for a Town game unless it can be combined with a weekend break. But I went there when it was the home ground of Bristol Rovers in the early 1990s. This was at a time when I knew nothing, and cared less, about the actual game: I had to be bribed to attend a match with a day out and a nice lunch, to both of which Bath lent itself nicely. My first visit was in September 1991, when Town won 3-2. I have very pleasant memories of strolling around admiring the Regency architecture, gazing dreamily at the surrounding hills from the terrace during the match and witnessing a spectacular hot air balloon festival when driving back to London up the M4.

I seem to recall the following year was more or less a repeat, but with a 3-0 scoreline. There was an added delight to that match. When it came to the end-of-season highlights video, the footage had been provided by Bristol Rovers, one of whose commentators was unable to suppress an exclamation of: "Oh no, Dave, they've scored!" This set me thinking about those wonderful John and Roly highlights productions riddled with random comments like "Shot on! Chance on!", "My money's on Dave Gilbert" and, mystifyingly at one point, "I'm not taking this coat off now." Looking at our video collection, I see the last one we have is for the 2002-03 season, Town's last in the second tier. Did the club stop making them, or did we just lose interest?

It is not unusual for people over 50 to harp on about how much better things were in the past, but with Town this is more like reality than nostalgia. There is one area in which things are definitely better now, though, and that is in finding out what happened at a match. Living down south in the early 90s all we had to tell us about games we didn't attend were a couple of (usually inaccurate) paragraphs on Ceefax; for ages I was convinced we had a player called Gary Charles. We solved this by persuading a Grimsby-dwelling friend to send us the Grimsby Telegraph every Monday for several years. I diligently compiled the cuttings into 10 scrapbooks which run from August 1991 to April 1999.

They are a cornucopia of cheesy headlines like "Town struggle to top Hatters", "Town find the Suffolk punch" and "Town make a splash in 'Pool". They also bring back fond memories of forgotten heroes like Chima Okorie, who seemed to promise so much but played only a few games. And of course many pages are devoted to the Ivano Bonnetti saga, including the campaign to raise £50,000 to buy his playing registration, to which I contributed £50. Money which I feel Brian Laws still owes me.

One of the most noticeable things is the consistency of the playing staff: the same names cropping up season after season. In August 1994 Alan Buckley boasted that he had not bought a single player during the close season. It was this consistency which created my loyalty to a club I had no geographical connection to - just as it is the current revolving door for players that is destroying that loyalty.

I also came across an interview given in 1994 by Town's then chairman, Peter Furneaux, who described the club not as a business but "more like being involved in charity work... with gates of 5,500 there's no way that you can project profits or payouts. We're looking after this club, that's all." It certainly doesn't feels like the current Town bosses, with their talk of "multi-purpose venues" and applications for government grants to build a community stadium, share this desire to look after their local club.

You will have noticed that I haven't mentioned Saturday's performance. What is there to say that hasn't already been said, except maybe "Town are a shower in Bath".