Cod Almighty | Diary

Unwisely referencing poets

24 March 2015

Tonight's match at Dover is the last Tuesday night game of the regular season. With just five matches in March this year, we feel a bit short-changed, thinking back to the rampaging, season-transforming March 1990 and the almost perfect March 1991 (which gave way to an April proving that TS Eliot, despite all appearances to the contrary, was a football fan). However, in the Grimbarian calendar, spring came early this year. If Town go up, we'll surely point to the win at Barnet as the moment when it all started to go right.

Dover play at Crabble, its splendid name derived from the Old English 'crab hole'. They have spurned all kinds of opportunities for fine nicknames – the Crabbers, the Ferrymen, the Sole Boys? – and settled on the Whites. More to the point, they are on a decent run of form themselves, with wins over Kidderminster, Altrincham and Gateshead in their last three games.

Let's pretend you come here for team news. Jack Mackreth is being given the chance to prove he's no longer poorly but Chris Doig is hinting at an unchanged team. Long-retired Kremlinologists are being taken out of mothballs to speculate on why Deputy Doig, not Paul Hurst, appears to be the man facing the media nowadays. Middle-Aged Diary never did get round to listening to Hurst's interview after the Chester game.

So can we do it? Of course. Will we do it? Get back to me in a month. There's no point referring you back to 1991, when we lost at home to relegation-bound Crewe but still made it over the line. Whatever anyone says, you will not "go gentle into that good night" but rage against the dropping of points. Let's hope our family, friends and colleagues can make allowances. Our lives are not quite our own these next few weeks.