Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 23 April 2013

23 April 2013

We have no idea how the season is going to end, so this is just the moment to look back on its highlights.

Man of the match adjudicators are often given the invidious job of determining a game's most influential player when it is still in the balance, with five, or even thirty-five minutes still to play. But this is a chance to do something different, to pick up on Miss Guest Diary's final sentence yesterday and to reflect on what we have experienced. We are not interested in achievements, for now, the dry accountancy that equates a tap in from a goalkeeping error and a 30-yard thunderbolt with a pragmatic "they all count". We are interested in the moments we are going to remember, in themselves and for themselves, as the dust starts to settle on the log books. The moments we will remember because we were there. Not necessarily at the game, that is, but because we experienced the tension of listening to John Tondeur's commentary, or came in from a real-life interruption to learn the good news.

Your Middle-Aged Diary, for example, has few 'at the match' experiences to draw on this season, but I will remember where I was when we qualified for the FA Trophy final, in an NHS portacabin with my partner awaiting a routine procedure, possibly even longer than I will remember the final itself. On Saturday, during one of the Urmston Grimsby Town Supporters Association's regular trips to watch Trafford in the Northern Premier League North, I fell into conversation with someone who asked if I got to watch Town often. Hyde, Stockport and Macclesfield tripped off my tongue, but it was only two days later I realised I had not thought to mention the visit to Wembley. Going to Wembley was an achievement but does not feel, in itself, like a highlight.

From my limited stock, my personal highlight of the season was the win at Macclesfield, which combined watching the players come to terms with difficult opposition, adjusting their tactics to negate their strong midfield and put pressure on their nervous defence, and good humoured, committed support, a throwback to a time when we made players and officials aware of their human fallibilities with wit and warmth (sometimes like a blowtorch is warm).

Write to us now with your personal highlights before they get contaminated with the memory of how the season wound up. The dog days are coming when your diarists will be glad of the copy and we will all want to be reminded of the pleasures that await us when the new season begins, wherever we find ourselves.