Cod Almighty | Diary

All I want for Christmas is... victory over Coalville

3 December 2013

Congratulations in two places today. First, to Paul Hurst, the Conference's November Manager of the Month. In accepting the award, he failed to make the mistake of saying: "Yes, and I deserve it, given the really shite players I have to drum into behaving like some semblance of professional sportspeople week after week."

Hurst, having been the more self-effacing of the managerial duo before Rob Scott's dismissal, is perhaps the most low-key manager we have had since Kenny Swain replaced Brian Laws (after a long interregnum while the club pursued an interest in Jack Charlton), or even since Ron Ashman replaced Lawrie McMenemy. To the extent that this is because the players are doing the talking on the pitch, this is 'a good thing'.

However, one fears for the prospects of any club where the chairman major shareholder has a higher profile than the manager. Had anyone in the late 1980s or early 1990s spoken of "Peter Furneaux's Grimsby", we would have discovered a source of heat emanating from the manager's office at Blundell Park which would to this day be addressing all issues of fuel poverty in North East Lincolnshire.

That is entirely as it should be. Football is a sport first and, ideally, a business hardly at all. It is truly painful to watch the contortions that those who earn their livelihood from the game must make to reconcile themselves to commercial fantasies. The people who, for a year or two, get to make the decisions mainly just channel the money we put into the clubs we love. Their own investment is a fraction of ours. No wonder they can be so careless.

If this is unusually pompous, there is a reason. Today is your Middle-Aged Diary's 50th birthday. I cannot yet congratulate myself on a half-century of following Town – but by the spring of next year it'll be the 40th anniversary of the day when my elder brother suggested that we drop the pretence of supporting teams we would only ever see on telly and instead support the team we saw as a Christmas and Easter treat, the team of our father and grandfather. My thoughts today are with my family, and all the friends I have made through following Town.

It is tempting, from my aged outlook, to decry all modern trends, just as, no doubt, middle-aged fans did 40 years ago, and 80 years ago. Mainly, those trends accentuate what is already there. Young supporters, for example, are encouraged nowadays to make heroes of individual players, regardless of their team, rather than picking a favourite player from their favourite team.

And yet. Two weeks ago, I began the tale of Jimmy 'Skinny' Sykes, who made his debut in a gritty match between Coalville and Grimstown in the pages of some 1970s comic. That tale ends with Sykes being spotted, having scored a late winner despite playing on with a twisted ankle, by the manager of the famous Liverchester Hotspur. The fantasy, it seems, was always to play for a big club, rather than to be the player who helped your club become big. In 1974, it did not stop me turning my back on Tottenham and Liverpool to support Grimsby. And this week, I've no doubt, someone else will be making a lifetime's commitment to the Mariners.

I would say that all I want for my birthday is Town's safe passage through to the next rounds of the FA Trophy – tonight against Coalville with a tie at Barnet at stake – and the FA Cup. It is a surprisingly long time since a League team last beat us; let's keep that going. Actually though, a good bottle of whisky would go down rather nicely.