Cod Almighty | Diary

We gotta get out of this place

19 August 2013

Miss Guest Diary writes: Sport is really great, isn’t it? There I was on Friday, idly surfing the TV channels, when I came upon the world athletics championships just as the 5,000 metres was about to begin. I take no particular interest in either athletics or Mo Farah, but within 30 seconds of the start I was hooked. And by the time Mo was powering towards the finish line I was shouting encouragement at the TV. Brilliant! And then there’s Town.

Of late, I have increasingly found that I need to distance myself emotionally from Town in order to cope with their up and down fortunes. It’s like one of those relationships you have in your teens with someone a bit exotic and totally unsuitable who you know is going to break your heart. But he is really great to be with and, when it’s going well, you feel fantastic. You tell yourself that it’s not serious, it’s only a bit of fun, so that you can forgive him when he forgets to turn up for a date or cheats on you with a friend. Likewise with Town: when they follow up an entertaining win at Gateshead on Tuesday with a disappointing performance against Welling on Saturday, I try to convince myself it doesn’t matter, it’s only a game.

Unfortunately, this whole analogy is not really sustainable, because bad relationships inevitably end but a football team is for life. So, unlike my Canadian boyfriend who simply disappeared one day, leaving me free to find a more suitable partner, Town are going nowhere. I have seen plenty of Town defeats and quite a few poor performances over the last 23 years, so I have been pondering my current need for a coping strategy and have concluded it’s down to Twitter.

In the last year or so I have spent a lot of time among the #GTFC community, where the overriding belief is that Town are “too big” for non-League and “deserve” to be promoted. When you have this mindset, it’s not surprising that every defeat feels like a disaster and every poor performance is unforgiveable. I think we may all need to get out more.

A good place to start would be the evening with John McDermott being hosted at Blundell Park on 30 August by the Mariners Trust to coincide with the launch of his biography. Or, if you can’t make that, Macca will be signing copies of the book at Waterstone’s in Grimsby from midday on 8 September. Recalling happier times with a true Town legend should be a real tonic.