Cod Almighty | Diary

A walk in the park can become a bad dream

8 April 2015

Hello all, it's your sunburnt London Diary here back in the capital after a scorching weekend up on the east coast. I arrived back down south yesterday and was asked where I had been to get my new golden looks. "The Ploggers and Alfreton, lads." I was met with confused faces. It's cheaper than the Algarve.

I'm not going to talk too much about the Gateshead game as that has been covered, but I will talk a little about the Alfreton game. Now when I discovered the news of all the changes, at 2:25pm on Monday, I was cursing like the next man, and trust me, the next man was cursing. "He's sticking Gowling right next to Parslow?" I mean, Parslow isn't exactly a regular.

Sadly, I think the addition of Parslow's name on a teamsheet will result in a fair number of scowls from Town fans for the remainder of his stay because of that substitution. But I could see what he was doing with Gowling. Get the lad into the team in a game that we were probably going to win, team him up with Pearson and then if Toto gets banned for a few important games, we're all gelled up.

Parslow though? Magnay's man enough to play 100 games a season. That back four of Robertson (who has been brilliant), Toto, Pearson and Magnay is one of the strongest I've seen for a fair few years. With goalscoring Gowling as a back-up, we've got one of the strongest defences in the league. Now let's sort out those leaks for the final three games.

Chapell came on in the 89th minute and even though he only had a few touches of the ball, he looked sharp. I've got a mate who's a Torquay fan (haven't we all) and he said that he's the ideal winger to bring on at 75 mins, whatever that means. Anyway, I'd like to see more of him.

What I wouldn't like to see more of, though, are the two boring arses that I had the misfortune of standing next to in the first half at Alfreton. Now I know that sometimes Cod Almighty can be seen as very much a 'glass half full' kinda place, but I think that these two blokes are responsible for going round and removing the top half of liquid from glasses. They moaned about everything and anything – while wearing hi-vis jackets.

I'm not sure whether they were going with the theme of the day or whether they were health and safety pedants making sure that people weren't having too much fun. But the icing on the cake for me was when one of the 'cod-pieces' was moaning about Jack Mackreth for the first 30 minutes, then when he finally managed to get past his defender, claimed: "Well yeah, he's a crap defender, anyone can skin him." Mate, give up and go home.

As Middle-Aged Diary made a rallying call yesterday, I am going to echo his request. Please, please, please, get behind the boys. This isn't a 100-metre sprint to the end: this a bloody hill climb with hot coals and seagull crap along the way. Do whatever you can to get to the last games of the season. And while you're there lose your voice chanting the names of the new heroes who could get us out of this league.

Wouldn't it be lovely, on that last day of the season, to throw away your ticket for the Aldershot game knowing that's the last time you'll see the Banana-sodding-rama name at the top and that you'll soon be seeing admittedly another sponsor's name, but followed by the words 'Football League'.

I long for that day. Let's bloody do this. UTM.