Cod Almighty | Diary

It's nice to know we aren't as good at corruption as some countries

14 November 2014

An awful lot has gone right in the last fortnight, as we attempt to really take the piss out of non-League football by becoming the only team in history to top the Conference without the use of strikers.

Hursty has finally started doing some of the things we've been badgering him about for so long, like playing Neilson and Arnold together on the correct wings, and setting the team up to suit our own strengths rather than to combat the overrated qualities of our opponents. Likeable Lenny has even turned goal poacher with a welcome tap-in winner at Braintree, which belied his usual modesty when faced with a sitter. If Lenny had a small garden as a kid, I pity his neighbours. But credit where it's due; a striker's job, like that of a traffic cone, is all about standing in the right place, and that he did.

Your faithful Retro Diary is quite enjoying this new world order. If we could just revert to 4-4-2 and leave Neilson on the pitch for 90 minutes, I might be able to stop moaning altogether.

So well are things going that I can almost overlook the Oxford debacle, with its first-half 'free jazz' formation, in which that tiresome closing-down thing was entirely dispensed with. As a consequence, we made Brazil out of an ordinary fourth division outfit, who must have thought it was Christmas.

Having said that, I would very much like to have replayed the tape with the two stonewall penalties being given. There seems to be a liberal consensus that refs don't actually cheat, but for me, that very much depends on your definition. Of course Mr Hurst gets fined if he criticises our glorious officials, so he is mostly rather polite about them. Retro Diary fears no such sanction, but does fear getting on the wrong side of a liberal consensus. So rather than describing them as cheats, I will happily refer to the Oxford ref and his lily-livered linesman sidekick as a pair of spineless cretins who think that avoiding being shouted at by players from a higher league is more important than doing their jobs properly. With those two looking on, an axe murder wouldn't have got us a penalty.

So – it would have been Tranmere at home in round two. No doubt we'd have drawn nil-nil, gone all the way to the Wirral on a work Tuesday for a dismal re-run of 8 May 2004 (yes, I'm sorry, you'd forgotten that). We'll never know for sure, but maybe that collapsible ref and his lapdog lino did us a favour.

Tomorrow we pay a visit to Altrincham's characterful little Moss Lane ground, now renamed the J Davidson Stadium. That's a local purveyor of scrap metal, apparently, not the homophobe OBE, who is a fan, by the way, of Charlton.

'Alty', one of non-League's more likeable outfits, are not in great shape, with manager Lee Sinnott having lost the plot a bit recently. Having kept his job despite succumbing to the division's bottom club Telford on Wednesday night, Sinnott is seemingly now on borrowed time. Like so many clubs before, Alty seem to be waiting for the ultimate humiliation, defeat at home to Grimsby, before consigning Sinnott to Davidson's handily placed scrapheap.

Town make the front page of today's Telegraph, with the club seeking a five-year lease on the Peaks Parkway site. The old artist's impression from the Conoco days is resuscitated, showing Glanford Park with red seats. All too symmetrical for me and, I suspect, for many others, in case I haven't said that before.

This week it's hello to Nick Draper, but not welcome back to Danny North, who was spotted this week training with Town while no doubt visiting his mum. Carl Magnay may or may not be fit for tomorrow, but everyone else is available, for a game which is clearly an anticlimax waiting to happen. If we can start to grind out wins in this kind of match, we really are in with a chance. Go on Paul, save our nerves and chuck on a striker or two. The key, I think, is to look how many other teams it seems to work for.