Cod Almighty | Diary

Born under a bad sign

9 December 2014

Miss Guest Diary writes: A couple of weeks ago Middle-Aged Diary asked people about their footballing superstitions as a prelude to writing an article on this topic. I don't have any such superstitions myself, of course – being a woman and having more sense – but I have mentioned here before that my partner has a tendency towards magical thinking. I was going to let Middle-Aged Diary have this story but, once you've been a Cod Almighty diarist for while, you learn to hang on to material for use on a slow news day.

As Town haven't played a game for ten days and the top stories in the Grimsby Telegraph are that Jack Mackreth has recovered from a hamstring niggle and that he thinks it's going to be a massive Christmas for Town, I think today qualifies. So here goes.

It took me a few years to realise that my partner has superstitions about what he wears to Town games. We lived down south then and didn't go to that many games, and back then it was confined to 'lucky' underpants. But about ten years ago he began to include outerwear in the equation, having to wear the same trouser/shirt/jacket combo to every game. For your information, this season's combo is a grey shirt with a black jumper and trousers.

Added to which, I have noticed recently that the superstition seems to have extended to where he parks in Brereton Avenue for home games.

Now I'm no slouch in the laundry department but I confess to not always having the shirt ready for Tuesday games. This happened two weeks ago for the Woking match, so he was forced to wear a different (though very similar) shirt. Then, horror of horrors, someone was already in his 'special' parking spot and we had to leave the car a bit further up the road. But, I hear you say, Town played quite well and won 3-1. Precisely.

I pointed this out to said partner, also pointing out that he had both worn the lucky shirt and parked in the lucky place for the previous Saturday's debacle against Kidderminster. So, I asked, what use were his rituals in influencing the outcome of Town games? I should have know better.

He countered with the fact that, for the Kidderminster game, we had swapped seats so that he could sit next to a mate from out of the area who had come to the game. So it seems that the bad luck of sitting in the 'wrong' seat had trumped the positive influences of the shirt and the parking spot.

You can't win. Or rather, I can't. Town had no trouble winning against Woking despite the absence of the lucky omens; or maybe the win was down to the 'lucky' 4-4-2 formation they were playing.