Cod Almighty | Diary

604, Toxteth O'Grady, USA

9 October 2014

Retro Diary writes: It's turned cold out there, and this season is already approaching that point at which the turnaround of the century is needed to avoid historical obscurity – and the season-wrecking 'silly cup' hasn't even started yet. I'm already worried that my abiding memory of 2014-15 will turn out to be the inability to applaud a winning team off the pitch after the Welling game because of the sight of the near-naked body of the chairman heading across the sacred turf towards me, engaging in some slightly homoerotic player bottom-patting as he went.

That day, Cllr Fenty (Con) took his ice like a man – it was for charity, of course, which is great. Seriously. Why he couldn't have waited five minutes for the players to leave the pitch and worn a T-shirt, you might well ask. And the subsequent nomination of Cllr De Freitas (Lib) was positively the wrongest thing I've ever heard from a wet naked football chairman with goosepimples.

Yesterday London Diary expressed Tuesday night's mood with characteristic aplomb, to which I can only add banal factual observations as seen from my frozen pew in the Main. Only already-committed season ticket holders and a handful of miscellaneous ambulance chasers turned up to watch. Town's performance was probably as good as you could expect from a well-established non-League outfit playing with the handicap of a 4-5-½ formation.

'Alty' (as it said on their socks) were likeable in their non-dirtiness and were obviously amenable to slaughter. So complete was their submission that they didn't even appeal when Jimmy Mack seemed to touch the ball twice at a goal kick. They only chuntered half-heartedly when they pushed the ball into touch for a Town injury and then didn't get it back. And when denied a pretty good penalty shout at the death (which the Telegraph didn't even report), they played on gamely, apparently putting this injustice down to jolly bad luck.

Mr Fenty's eagerly awaited statement released this morning – which we all rightly assumed was really an update on the fate of the manager – carefully avoids the dreaded 'vote of confidence'. Instead, Mr F says that to change the manager now would not be an "appropriate or sensible action", which isn't quite the same thing as saying we like what he's doing. So the hapless Hurst must endure an endgame of indeterminate length, knowing that he isn't being sacked until a more appropriate time. Ouch.

I am more than usually sad to see the efforts of this particular diminutive gaffer hitting the skids. Clearly a thinking and sensitive bloke, he was well and truly chucked in at the deep end by the idiocy of his old mate, and has put a decent squad together for this year's assault on the title of football's tallest midgets.

In the end Hurst has been brought down by his happy acceptance of a situation which not long ago we couldn't have imagined in our worst nightmares.  Also, an unwillingness to set up his best eleven in the simplest way and let the quality of his squad speak for itself; JP's torn hamstring; and an incomprehensibly loyal devotion to a certain likeable but useless centre-forward have set the clock ticking on his 'appropriateness'. Life, eh – it ain't always pretty or fair.

Finally… today's good news for exiles is that the Cleethorpes Chronicle, whose coverage of Town is – get this for novelty – honest, is now available globally as an 'app'. It's only a weekly, but on a Thursday when it comes out it's as up to date as anything.