The Diary

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Let's go again

2 October 2014

I was on Rob Scott's side, sometimes. Like the time the former manager formerly known as Shouty became a YouTube phenomenon, losing patience with a moaning heckler and famous telling him: "If you don't like it, don't facking come." Your original/regular Diary warmed to Scott that week, despite his actions not exactly representing great PR. Or was it because his actions didn't represent great PR?

In the end, though, he was a liability. I read in the Non-League Paper about the sort of reputation he was getting around the game. I heard some pretty awful things from around the club. It was clearly not for nothing that Scott was seeking anger management guidance. I probably warmed to his YouTube rant because there were shades of Brian Clough about it. But this isn't the 1970s, and those methods don't work any more. Also Rob Scott hadn't won the European Cup.

Either way, his intervention this week has had a few people talking.

 

 

Scott isn't the only person to think this, of course. And isn't it interesting how "the clown who owns the club" finally seems to have developed a bit of patience with managers – at what is possibly the first moment of his tenure when there might be a credible case for getting rid of one.

A plague on both their houses. All their houses. And their sheds.

Chris Parker, meanwhile, has announced that he will step down as chair of the Mariners Trust. CA and the trust have not taken identical positions on every issue around GTFC recently – indeed, we think it's healthy that we don't. But well done to Chris in what is realistically an impossible job. Getting two supporters' reps on the board is great, as is the huge increase in trust membership with Chris at the helm. I hope his successor can continue to strengthen the trust, protecting the club from its owner in particular.

Last up today, I was quite excited to see that Town's visit to Wrexham on 11 October will be the hosts' 150th anniversary match. There's something very special about being a guest on the other club's big day. I was lucky enough to be at the Hawthorns 20 years ago, when the Mariners' visit coincided with the last day of the "Brummie Road end" as a standing terrace. And I won't quickly forget our emotional trip to Shrewsbury in 2007, when supporters of both teams said goodbye to Gay Meadow and Sir John McDermott at the same time.

So here's looking forward to Town's 150th anniversary in… [fires up Windows calculator accessory] …the year 2028. And here's hoping that by then the clown, Shouty, and Southport alike will have long become nothing more than the vaguest of bad memories. Up the bleedin' Mariners, today and forever.