Cod Almighty | Diary

Saturn, the dancing planet, tucked under her arm

6 February 2015

Retro Diary writes: So this week momentum has been well and truly lost as rubbish weather has twice left the confident and resurgent Mariners gnashing at the cage.

This might, then, be a good time to mention that from next season teams in our division will again be allowed to have plastic pitches. This may be as a result of a glut of irritating postponements – including multiple consecutive no-shows at Gateshead last season, whose crap surface resulted in them playing a great slab of the season at alternative venues. But it is much more likely to be a reaction to the parlous state of many lower clubs' finances, being a way of allowing them to make more money, or the same money more often, out of their rectangle of real estate.

If you thought plastic was an abomination and a thing of the past, well, so did I. It was banned, rightly, in 1995. The stupid bounce was an issue as I remember, as were carpet burns, and many complained about the home team having an unfair advantage. I once watched Town beat Preston away on a pitch that wasn't even green.

Of course they're not so bad this time round (silly us), because they've changed their name. They're now called '3G' pitches. The grass is still plastic, but now they have 'soil', in the shape of black rubber pellets which are supposed to provide some 'give' that wasn't there before.

Recently Stevenage became the first Football League team to play on plastic since the bad old days, when they travelled to seventh-tier Maidstone United in the FA Cup. Plastic is allowed in the Isthmian Premier League in which Maidstone currently reside, and also technically in every round of the FA Cup. Only when these two criteria collide do we see the unnatural hue of a synthetic surface emerge luridly into the limelight. After a 2-1 defeat, Stevenage players complained bitterly about the effect of the over-firm surface on their joints and limbs, although of course humiliation is known to have the same effect.

Wales also played on plastic in their recent Euro qualifier in Andorra. Every sliding tackle created what looked very much like a wave of coal dust. Wales put in a complaint, despite winning.

I suppose that whether you find plastic fantastic depends on whether you think that coping with varying, sometimes difficult conditions is part and parcel of football. I once saw Town lose 4-0 to Derby at the Baseball Ground where, 20 minutes in, both teams were playing in all brown and the ball wouldn't roll at all. Derby, as I remember, in those days played in white only in August and May, but it didn't seem to do them any harm – in 1975 the Rams and their acre of mud won the first division title.

That the country that gave the world both the simplest and most beautiful game and the most perfect and greenest grass should be lowered to play their prized invention on plastic would seem to be yet another inexcusable piece of detachment from soil and seasons that is slowly sending the world towards environmental and spiritual ruin. When we consider the alternative, maybe the odd postponement should just be borne with sanguine and stoical good grace.

Anyway, by the time the Conference is scrubbing its skin away on astroturf, hopefully Town will be over the hills and far away. Talking of which, tomorrow it's Forest Green again in another one of those bizarre failings of the Conference's Commodore 64 free fixturemaster program.  

For Rovers, out goes Eddie Oshodi, the ever popular and uncharacteristically diffident defender who has made the unusual decision to leave football at 23 and move into charity work. Also veteran villain Lee Hughes, who has signed for Kidderminster. Years ago we would have thought that not facing Hughes would be a jolly good thing, but the Duracell is finally flat and the legs have gone.

In through the January window come James Marwood, son of Brian (ex of the PFA), Charlie Clough, the talented Corby Moore (whose parents obviously never went to Corby) and striker Stuart Fleetwood. David Pipe plays his third game back after suffering from pneumonia.

For us, Christian Jolley returns to a club to which he recently went out on loan and didn't do a thing, which means that by the unwritten natural law of football he should play a blinder and score. Jolley will be meeting the green giant Jon Parkin, who will be Rovers' danger man up front. Scott Brown and JP are still not right, but the rest are well and truly ready for a run-out.

That is all except Scott Neilson, who is left at home with the juniors and told to pull his socks up. The sad demise of Aswad and Scotty, the division's most feared left flank, is spectacularly not cleared up in today's Telegraph in an orgy of obfuscatory and evasive parallel-universe-speak from a slightly narked manager. There is evidently so much we don't see from the stands, and which our 18 quid obviously doesn't qualify us to know.

Forest Green are one place below Town, having now won four league games on the trot. Their next four games are Alfreton, Altrincham, Telford and Southport, while our next two are Bristol Rovers and Barnet, so we could do with not letting them get any closer to us than the six points that separate us now.

Don't forget to assemble your Great Grimsby XI here. Take your time, imagine the smell of sea air, fags, damp soil and youthful optimism, and feel the joy.