Cod Almighty | Diary

Helplessly hoping

14 April 2014

Miss Guest Diary writes: We've probably all heard that cliché which seems to be a favourite among football fans: I can handle the despair; it's the hope that kills. Well, apparently, there is now some research which shows that hope does actually make you feel worse. That giving up hope sets you free to just get on with life.

I can see what they mean: hoping that Luton would come back from 3-0 down to beat Braintree, then hoping that Sheffield United would beat Hull so we wouldn't have to spend the next month avoiding all the hoopla on Look North and Radio Humberside, were both pointless wastes of time and emotional energy which could have been spent on better things.

So I'm going to stop hoping that Town make the play-offs and then get promoted back into the League. I'm simply going to wait and see what happens and put my energy into supporting the team and enjoying the games.

Let's face it, hope is just another form of magical thinking – something I have complained of before in my partner. You know, the one with the 'lucky' shirt. In all other walks of life he is the most logical and rational person I know, but when it comes to Town all that sense goes out of the window.

At the game on Saturday, when the stoppage time board was raised, I sat back and made some comment about another three points for Town. Of course, about 30 seconds later Chester scored. I glanced at my partner's thunderous face and knew exactly what he was thinking: that I had somehow caused that goal. Fortunately, Chester couldn't manage two fluky deflected crosses in one game or I would have copped it on the way home. (Now I don't want people to think he's some kind of wife batterer. When I say "copped it" I mean he would probably have ignored me on the walk back to the car and then been really grumpy until we were out of Brereton Avenue.)

Well done to the Mariners Trust for arranging Liam Hearn's visit to Blundell Park on Saturday, enabling the fans to bid farewell and show their appreciation of him. A real Town legend: his 29 goals in the 2010-11 season seem likely to remain a high water mark for Town strikers for some time to come.

The trust has now published the full results of its supporters' survey, which make for some interesting reading. I was disappointed to see that only 10 per cent of the responses came from women. Looking around me in the Pontoon, I would have thought women made up more than 10 per cent of the crowd. Does that mean we don't want to share our views or we simply aren't interested in contributing to what happens at the club? How will we ever get hot water in the ladies' toilets if we don't engage?!