Cod Almighty | Diary

Miserable obscurity

28 November 2014

Retro Diary writes: There are enough half-decent footballers knocking about in this world to put together a team that can take the Conference title at a canter. And so it has traditionally been that the division's miserly one automatic promotion spot is usually claimed easily by a single dominant team, ending the campaign early for the rest. List them: Stevenage, Crawley, Fleetwood, Mansfield, Luton.

This year, quite clearly, that team should be Town. Hursty has put together the best squad of players in the division. None of the ex-League teams have produced a group of world-beaters, and the division's nouveau-riche have been found to be not riche enough. This year, no-one excels, except maybe Barnet, whom one intuitively feels are soon to implode. Nobody knows how long this will last – maybe next year Bristol Rovers, or Wrexham, or Tranmere, or Boreham Wood, will be 20 points clear by Christmas, thus committing the rest to miserable obscurity or a play-off lottery, again. No, this is our year. But hell, are we making hard work of it.

Hursty's irritation at last Saturday's boos from the home crowd indicates that he thinks that a non-performance and a tenuous grip on second place is all great and fabulous, and he says as much. He thinks that once a formation has been found comprehensively not to work, the idea is to cram it, mangle it and bash it 'til it does work, however long it takes. "If people think that we're going to be Chelsea and run away with things, I can tell them that's not going to happen," he says this week. Why not? It's a hell of a lot easier to storm the Conference than the Premier League, and every year someone does it. Look at this list and tell me if you can see anything outlandish about it: Stevenage, Crawley, Fleetwood, Mansfield, Luton, Grimsby.

There seems to be an assumption that it is unreasonable to expect a manager to finish no lower than top. The question is then, how many divisions does our great club have to sink before only top is good enough? I would say we're there now.

Town don't play at home again till Forest Green on Friday 19 December, and I'm sure that will suit Hursty down to the ground. Ever since he took over he has given the distinct impression he doesn't like that big know-all home crowd chirruping advice at the back of his head and questioning his decisions. He evidently much prefers the empty wildernesses of the Conference's far-flung stations where he can carry out his crazy experiments in peace.

Like last year, this season seems to be turning into yet another power struggle between manager and fans. After Saturday's debacle, Hursty wilfully misinterpreted the crowd's boos to suit himself. And he chose Tuesday's miraculously improved performance – for which he takes a great deal of credit – to give an interview of bemusing disingenuousness.

This forced both able deputy Doig and the heroic Disley to back up his curious assessments in subsequent interviews, making all three look extremely shifty. He strained hard, too hard, to impress on us that NO WAY was the victory due to the change in formation to 4-4-2 that every last fan, broadcaster and pundit has been telling him he should deploy since day one. Saturday wasn't that bad, and Tuesday wasn't that good, Hurst says, with no hint of self-consciousness.

Okay, okay. We do not wish to humiliate our manager or harass his loyal accomplices. Underneath it all we're on Hursty's side and nothing would give us greater pleasure than to see him conquer the world at Town's helm. His fragility under pressure makes him human, and we realise he can't be seen to let the Main Stand pick the team. So we will give him the plaudits for that admittedly fine and entertaining victory on Tuesday and move on. However, treating the crowd like fools, I rather think, will not turn out to be an overly sensible long-term plan.

Perhaps we should be grateful that we haven't got the spectacularly charmless Garry Hill in charge. This Grimsby team, which was good enough to brush aside his lot, is apparently the worst he's ever seen. Where's he been? That's what I say. At least he didn't accuse us of cheating this year.

A game with division-proppers Telford probably isn't what we needed at this point, but tomorrow it's what we've got. Apparently Aswad's sickness bug has spread to a couple of his team-mates, but we're not allowed to know who is struck down. We the fans understand perfectly well that a victory is not guaranteed tomorrow – but if we play a formation which is both comprehensible and even modestly ambitious, and every player gives 100 per cent effort, I can tell you now, we will not boo.

Apparently Town could be in line to receive another windfall of up to £48,000 from the Ryan Bennett sell-on money. In a somewhat speculatory gesture, Mister F went to court this week to find out what a judge thought of some uncharacteristically imprecise legalese in the contract with Peterborough. Needless to say, Peterborough don't want to pay.

And lastly, following on from original/regular Diary's description yesterday of our tendency to adopt black humour to cope with our lot, the ventolin inhaler in our house has now become known as the 'home piercing kit'.