Cod Almighty | Diary

Let football commence

12 August 2014

Your Middle-Aged Diary is a man on a mission. Not a very good mission, it must be admitted, but a mission nonetheless.

Manager Paul Hurst is in characteristic form talking about our first home match of the season tonight against Nuneaton. Nuneaton may have lost 3-0 at home on Saturday but that means they are likely to "tighten up defensively". The Telegraph subeditor might want to talk about a "cauldron of noise" at Blundell Park. Hurst contents himself with "hoping for... a decent opening crowd".

Hurst is, in short, in the kind of mood that led me to suggest the nickname Football Club Repairman a few weeks ago. That idea having taken off with all the buoyancy of Tony Crane in a diving bell, I remain hellbent on having the manager formerly known as Shorty named after a character played by Michael Palin. I therefore suggest Eric Olthwaite, a man whose talk of the blackness of black puddings, average precipitation rates in West Yorkshire and makes of shovel led his family to leave home to escape him.

Criticism? Not at all. Let the players do the entertaining (on the pitch, that is, not necessarily in the pubs the night before a game) and let us entertain ourselves. Eric Olthwaite, via a career as a bank robber, came to be mayor of Denley Moor, the town hall packed out to hear his utterances. Get it right on the pitch and in the stands and by May, Hurst's press conferences may also be packed out, the quiet understatement of a modest man viewed as endearing idiosyncrasy.

I have also written before about the impact of a minute's silence: how the eerie silence, ended by a single whistle, gives way to a guttural roar. We have been silent for three months. Let's end the silence tonight with a noise we'll still be hearing after 90 minutes and after 45 matches.