Cod Almighty | Diary

One last quiet Tuesday

4 March 2014

This is the last no-news Tuesday of the season. The Telegraph has been reduced to serialising an interview with Craig Disley, and Too Good to Go Down's Telewag blog has fallen back on that perennial standby, favourite Town keepers. You'd never find Cod Almighty stooping to that.

Generally, your Middle-Aged Diary enjoys the challenge of being able to waffle on about whatever is on my mind on a quiet day. Today however, the flesh is strong but the spirit is weak. Let me mark your card with some profitable reading away from here.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the death of Keith Alexander. If you are travelling to Moss Rose on Saturday, you might want to look out for the plaque that Macclesfield have put up for Alex and for one of his players, Richard Butcher. In the meantime, Sam Metcalf's tribute captures the essence of the great man and the great times when he was at Blundell Park.

Alexander, as Sam says, was one of those players "you thought you almost knew", and part of the pleasure in watching him at small grounds was being able to see his emotions etched with comic-book clarity across his face. There was a single spot about six yards out in front of the away end at Colchester's Layer Road where Alex, in consecutive seasons, missed golden chances, one with his head, one with his foot, once to save a point and once to win the match. No-one needed to berate him; we could all see he was even more dismayed than we were. By contrast, his grin after shinning home the goal that all but sealed promotion at Southend in 1990 remains among my favourite memories.

Players like Keith Alexander never fade. There is a quiet part of every Town fan's mind where great players and personalities are engaged in an unending game, the result both deliciously in the balance and euphorically never in doubt. One day, some of today's players will be joining the fun.