Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 19 February 2013

19 February 2013

Rob Scott is promising to use our whole squad over the coming weeks, starting tonight at Braintree, confident that changes can be made without weakening the team. If you just heard someone shout "hear, hear", it was probably Ross Hannah.

The Shouty one also promises that Town are better equipped to handle Braintree than they were in 2011. Of that 5-0 defeat, he asks: "Do you sit and sulk about it or do you try and put it right so that it doesn't happen again?"

We sometimes speak of turning points in matches as well as seasons. Last Saturday's match had several. The early volley fired straight at James McKeown contrasts with Craig Disley's first goal. McKeown's save to keep the score at 1-0 contrasts with the Dartford keeper's error for Disley's second. Middle-Aged Diary's guess is that in years to come, the folk memory of the game will focus on McKeown's save and Bettinelli's lapse.

And yet. Those four turning points all turned in Town's favour, but it is not too hard to imagine a different course in which McKeown could not make the save and the match finished 1-1. Then we would be talking about a fifth turning point, when Joe Colbeck missed his free header, failing to capitalise on the Mariners' dominance after taking the lead. Football is a game of chance, but the better teams have more chances and have players more likely to take advantage of them. That is perhaps why, without playing particularly well, we are still winning.

It is also why we will suffer setbacks; the odd chance will go against us. Look back over a season and you are tempted to imagine it all rested on a contentious penalty or a freak goal against you. But all our rivals are accumulating their own hard luck stories. There are chances everywhere, and most of them we won't even know about. The Town side battling relegation from the second flight early this century suffered blows when big decisions went against us in consecutive weeks against Bradford and Watford. On the sidelines, relegation looked certain after that, but the players worked even harder and got clear. As Scott implied, turning points are not fatal in themselves: it is how we respond to them that will determine how successful the season proves to be.