Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 26 March 2013

26 March 2013

"If you can't speak well of someone, rather don't say anything". It is tempting to leave some space there, and then write about anything other than Richard Brodie.

However, that would not quite be fair. Your Middle-Aged Diary has tried to be relentlessly upbeat the last few weeks, in part because I haven't had the opportunity to observe what others have been criticising. On Sunday, I saw for myself a potentially decent footballer, one destined even as he leaves the club to enter the ranks of its legends. Unfortunately, that decent player is trapped in the body of one lazy and ill-disciplined. And the section of our history to which he belongs is that devoted to the likes of Mickael Antoine-Curier (worst loan striker) and Tony Crane (worst penalty miss).

Sunday also revealed a team with all the tropes of one shorn of confidence. The ponderous distribution. The lack of players showing for the ball. The tendency to defend far too deep the moment we had anything to defend. If the presence of Brodie (whether as one of the too many cooks spoiling the broth, or any other, more malign, reason) has contributed to the loss of form of Ross Hannah and Andy Cook, then we can hope for the beginning of an upturn. More worrying was the lack of bite and cohesion in midfield.

Tonight we play Gateshead, with Paul Hurst promising a team selection based on the squad members with most running left in them. This much-rearranged tie takes place at Hartlepool. The familiar injunction "don't mention the monkey" now applies as much to Town fans; it is a figurative one, and it would be timely if we could get it off our backs this evening.

Everyone is skint after Wembley. The weather, and our form, are awful. And England are on telly. Which one of us would not like to be able to claim (and no doubt will, in years to come, when the truth cannot be verified) that we were there?