Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 26 February 2013

26 February 2013

On Friday 7 March 2008, the Mariners celebrated having qualified for a Wembley final three days before by losing 1-0 to the same apology for a football club to whom we would eventually lose that final. It marked the beginning of the end of our season, your memory probably tells you. However, we actually won two of the next three games. It was only in our last match before the final that the rot set in, with a home defeat to Brentford. Town failed to take a single point from the last seven games of the season. Before we beat Morecambe in the Associate Members' Cup semi-final, we had been 11th, seven points off the play-off places. We were actually two places higher, and two points closer to the play-offs even after losing to Brentford.

Go back another decade. Qualification for our first ever Wembley appearance was followed by a late equaliser for Luton (or Luton Booo, as your Middle-Aged Diary believes they are now officially called in NE Lincs) in a 2-2 draw and an inauspicious record until the final was played of six points from seven matches. During that period, we dropped a place from third to fourth, and fell a further point behind the last automatic promotion place. Our advantage on the first team outside the play-off places actually increased.

Our form between qualifying for a final and playing the final was therefore in neither season critical to our success in the league. In any case, analogies are dangerous because they imply that events will always follow the same course. They might, but they need not – history makes people but people make history and we can decide to do things differently.

Analogies are also inevitably inexact. In 1998, our hopes of securing an automatic promotion place were slim (we were six points behind Watford in second) while our play-off hopes were close to being assured. In 2008, our hopes of a play-off place really rested on a not terribly good squad (there were two or three players in that side we'd like to have today, not many more) playing with great and ultimately unsustainable intensity to haul themselves up the table. In 2013, by contrast, we are in the thick of a very tight promotion race, and there is no excuse for distraction.

Looking back is a way of taking precautions to avoid making the same mistakes. The interviews with players and managers since Saturday suggest those precautions are being taken. We will know more about how successful they are after tonight's meeting with Ebbsfleet.