Cod Almighty | Diary

You just haven't earned it yet, baby

17 April 2014

Alfreton tomorrow! Who's going? Who's going to Alfreton? Loads of people. A thousand or more. Probably not your original/regular Diary, however, who is no longer able or willing to negotiate the obstacles that generally present themselves when a good away trip beckons. Time was when I could get kettled by the police in Barnsley and shrug it off. Or at least let the police take one look at me, belly-laugh extensively at the idea of such a fey, wispy individual having any involvement at all with hooliganism, and then release me from the kettle, still rattling their handcuffs with mirth.

Not any more. I can't being doing with it these days. It might be age. It might be tiredness. It might be the experience of being kettled by the police in Scunthorpe into a really shit pub that only had Stones and Carling on tap.

I thought Nicky Law had found his level a few years ago when I saw his Alfreton side take on Sheffield in the Northern Counties East League. Little did I realise his side and the Mariners would regularly be meeting in the league five or six seasons later. It's a bit like the time in the 1990s when my old mate Chris showed me the half-finished new stadium his local grassroots club was building. I chuckled patronisingly at their ambition, without the vaguest notion that I would one day visit again to watch GTFC, let alone to see them humiliated 3-1 by Rushden and bloody Diamonds.

Thanks for reading. If you're going tomorrow, have a great day and don't break any plant pots.