Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 13 March 2013

13 March 2013

Ouch! That smarts. We're not used to losing back-to-back games these days. Our collective optimism about automatic promotion took a proper kick in the bollocks last night as Town, for the most part, put in a very admirable performance against the Conference's form team but still lost.

Your West Yorkshire Diary doesn't want to come across as a told-you-so twat - and won't, because I don't think anyone disagreed with me on this when I said it a few weeks ago. But playing badly and winning games was inevitably going to lead to defeats. We all said it. What we didn't expect, at Mansfield at least, was a better performance to go with it.

I can't ignore the fact that, heading into the new year, we had a great strike partnership of Cook and Hannah, both of whom were on form and scoring goals. Hannah went back to Bradford. Would he return in the transfer window? No matter - we got Richard Brodie while we waited. Hannah came back! Well, we were spoilt for choice up top. But how about bringing another striker to the club on an 18-month contract and rotate all four of them unnecessarily? From my position in CA's ivory tower, the result appears to be that all four have lost form, which was brought about by a lack of confidence in whether they'll get a consistent run in the side. It now also looks like Cook and Hannah have picked up injuries.

But what do I know? This season could yet finish with promotion and the FA Trophy. It could equally end with nothing. The shorter of the two managers reckons there will be lots of twists and turns to come, which is him basically acknowledging that our fate no longer rests in our hands. If there's one thing we all know in football, from very harsh lessons of the past, it's that you should never start relying on other people to do you favours. Things very rarely work out that way. You can only help yourself in these situations, so some sleeves will need to be rolled up - including those of the fans.

Let's not turn on the team. Let's be proper fans and support them. We can make a difference, as Miss Guest Diary talked about on Monday. This is a statistic I've rolled out before, but I'm not afraid to roll it out again to make the point: only once since 1999 have the Mariners finished higher than 11th in any division. Let's not forget that we're actually having an excellent season, and that we currently have players and a team worth the entrance fee. So let's keep up the good support, eh? The players deserve it.