Cod Almighty | Diary

"I've not been so-so... so insulted since that awful time at Grimsby when they were all drunk and threw the fish"

11 April 2014

Last night's match bore many of the hallmarks of recent Town performances. Our bright start was rewarded with an early goal, and we remained in control for much of the first hour. Lenell John-Lewis had a couple of chances to increase our lead. However, with Dartford fighting to avoid relegation, the last half-hour was always going to be a test of fitness and resolution.

With many of our players turning out for their fourth game in nine days, it was a test too far. Dartford's two late goals mean our game in hand was wasted, and Town fans will surely be asking why, given how many matches we have had to pack in recently, Paul Hurst did not use the opportunity to rotate his squad. Players like Ross Hannah, Clayton McDonald and Andy Cook have all impressed at various times over the last year. Surely last night they would have been champing at the bit to prove their worth.

All football fans deal in what-ifs, but let's not pretend that any plan, even our own privately nourished pet plan, is foolproof. Football is a game of chance. The better sides make more and make better chances and, for that reason, win more often than not. But not always.

Many things might have happened at Dartford. We might have fielded a similar team to the one that drew with Woking and created and taken enough chances to make any fatigue in the last half-hour academic. However, that hasn't happened for a couple of months now – something that Hurst's critics had been quick to point out. Except that last night our usual starting XI, instead of scraping 1-0 wins recently, apparently became invincible.

What did happen last night is that we hit the post twice before Jamal Fyfield (an enforced change, given the injury to Aswad Thomas) was sent off and Dartford took advantage to score the only goal of the game. We therefore have to content ourselves with having a four-point margin and a game in hand on Alfreton, and a five-point advantage over Braintree – the two teams best placed to claim a play-off place at our expense. If that's a crisis, your Middle-Aged Diary wishes we'd had one like it in 2009-10. However, we might just as easily have been hailing Hurst's masterstroke in switching the team around.

Or rather, we might have won but we still might not have given Hurst the credit. A certain brittleness has entered his recent pronouncements, first evidenced when he noted, apparently wryly, that no-one praised him for introducing Andy Cook, whose late goal sealed the win at home to Wrexham. He cracked under that tension on Tuesday. Last night's remarks about referees not understanding the consequences of their decisons for people who make their livelihood from the game are also straight from the stressed manager's playbook.

If a rallying call were needed, it would surely have been better coming from Steve Croudson or Dave Moore, or Shaun Pearson

Hurst has told Radio Humberside that he may respond to the unavailability of both his left-backs by putting on his boots himself. That some on the twittersphere are (or are pretending to) take this apparently tongue-in-cheek suggestion seriously shows from what direction he is feeling the pressure.

Managers coming in for criticism often get stubborn, persisting in wrong-headed formations or experimental selections when all the evidence, as well as most of the fans, are against them. When he stopped being Shorty and took sole charge, it was partly Hurst's willingness to ditch one or two preconceived ideas that put our season back on course. The more a storm rages around his selections, the harder it may prove for him to think objectively. It was this lack of sympathy between fans and club that John Fenty was trying to address on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, a John Fenty statement is rather like a vote of confidence. No-one at Liverpool currently feels the need to say that Brendan Rodgers' job is safe, and our major shareholder/de facto chairman is usually quiet when everything is ticking over nicely at Blundell Park. However well-intentioned, Fenty has exacerbated the problem, in part because of his position, and in part because of the way he writes.

Like an English-as-a-foreign-language student who has been told he needs to use longer words and idiomatic expressions, he inserts phrases awkwardly, making the transparent opaque. Expect to see the hashtag #blindfaith used to cow anyone who puts their support for the club above the desire to express immediately any concerns they have about its direction. It has taken me two days to work it out, but if a rallying call were needed, it would surely have been better coming from Steve Croudson or Dave Moore, or Shaun Pearson.

As ever, a sense of perspective is needed. As I have been writing, my colleague, a Stockport fan, has just walked in and commented that struggling to ensure a place in the play-offs for a return to the Football League is a problem he would love to be having. Tomorrow, our match against Chester kicks off at 3:07. I won't be there, but I do know that for seven minutes after three o'clock I will be reflecting, whether I want to or not, on how important, but not all-important, football is to our lives. We will treat the memory of Hillborough with respect. That should give way to full-throated support for the team and enjoyment of the game.