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Diary - Monday 9 January 2012

9 January 2012

Miss Guest Diary writes: I'm finding supporting Town an unsettling experience at the moment. To travel home from a 5-2 away victory, watched in the company of over 1,000 fellow fans, feeling vaguely disappointed makes no sense. But that is exactly how I felt on Saturday. Don't get me wrong - I am really happy that Town won and are three points nearer the play offs, but... but...

The build-up to the game was perfect: a tasty lunch of liver and bacon casserole on the way, a car parking space on a side street just by the ground. Approaching the away end through a small coppice of tress and joining the queue of hundreds of Town fans singing, chanting and exchanging cheery banter was also great. Things started to go awry when it proved impossible to find a spot on the very crowded terrace of very shallow steps where we could see more than the upper half of the goal nearest to us (Town's two second half goals remained a mystery to me until I saw them on Mariners Player).

And then we scored an early goal, which seemed to deflate the Town fans. I have noticed that, of late, we seem to give our best support when the team are struggling. Maybe this is a hangover from the dark days of 2008-09, when we avoided relegation by the skin of our teeth and the support was all about backs to the wall and keeping the Mariners afloat. Whatever the reason, apart from a few wavering rounds of 'Mariners, Mariners' and a couple of failed attempts to get the 'black and white army' chant going, the crowd seemed relatively silent for most of the game.

Did this near silence affect the players? Asked to comment after the game, John Cockerill described the Town performance as "professional" which, as when a film is described as being "beautifully shot", I take to mean competent rather than inspirational. Shorty, in his post-match interview with Radio Humberside, described the support as "fantastic". In number terms it certainly was. But I can't help feeling that, if we had kept up the singing and chanting the way we did at Lincoln on Boxing Day, Town could have scored double figures. Then I certainly wouldn't have come away feeling let down.

But enough of my whinging: here is a good cause to support. Town fan Les Brechin plans to visit all 92 League grounds and 24 Conference Premier grounds in a week to raise money for a charity which helps brain tumour sufferers. If you can help, email lesbrechin@hotmail.com. Good luck Les.

And now some sad news, that former Town centre-half Graham 'Basil' Rathbone has died at the age of 69. He played 255 games between 1966 and 1973 and, judging from some of the messageboard reminiscences, he had a robust style of play. Apparently, he was once banned for eight games for fighting with a Scunthorpe player. If you have any memories of Graham which you would like to share, send them to diary@codalmighty.com.