Cod Almighty | Diary
If music be the food of love, are you the indigestion?
24 April 2015
When the new season's fixtures come out each June, you rifle through the roll-call of Saturdays and Tuesdays looking for certain things. Firstly, whether you start the season at home or away, although the Telegraph headline has almost certainly told you that already.
You look to see when your local derbies are, and who you play over Christmas and new year. You might have a glance at when you play the teams who are newly promoted to the division, and imagine their players wetting themselves with anticipation at the prospect of running out in a ground that doesn't look like two bus shelters, the arse end of a suburban high street and a rude expanse of sky.
Then, finally, you look at the last game of the season, and wonder whether this is your first tantalising glimpse of one of the days of your life, complete with glorious, sunny pitch invasion, and players held aloft by jubilant fans before reappearing to pass round a sweaty champagne bottle in the directors' box. We hasten to expel the contrary notion: that it will be the turgid closing credits on yet another anonymous episode in oblivion's middle years.
Who could have imagined this season that the finale would be such a maligned and unwanted fixture as this? Tomorrow's game is quite simply in the way.
Aldershot are one of those teams about whom it is hard to get excited. They have always been there whenever Town have been crap. Their fans have developed a pronounced inverted snobbery about their small, old-fashioned but characterful Recreation Ground, whose lack of a fourth side is the only thing stopping it being the complete 1970s lower-division theme park. The red and blue striped roof of the North Stand overlooked by a towering office block identifies the place immediately on the telly, and gives Aldershot a distinctive identity – something unique for their fans to imagine in their ever-unrealised fantasies. A healthy thing, surely, in this age of glory-seeking and plastic.
Weirdly, Aldershot still consider Reading, whom they call the 'Biscuits', to be their rivals. Reading's characterless Madejski Stadium is seen by Shots fans as being absolute proof of their lack of integrity, despite the fact that every Aldershot fan in the world could fit into one of its immaculate blue corners. We can at least agree with Aldershot fans that Reading's new ground has one major problem. It's in Reading.
Last week, Dover probably put paid to Town's season by scoring a scrambled goal against Bristol Rovers two minutes from time. On such little things are seasons tipped – it's the butterfly effect in football. Surely Barnet will now win the league, amazingly fending off the long-awaited implosion, and leave us to the sword of rampant Rovers at Wembley. That is if we get past one of the two minnows with money in the semis, having had to pick ourselves up from the profound apathy of the last three of the season's regular matches.
Take risks. Leave two forwards up the field. Try to beat a man from time to time. Dammit, we could even attack the near post or try to score more than one goal when we don't absolutely have to
So how do we approach tomorrow's game? We could play the second string and instruct the first XI not to leave the house or manhandle anything heavier than a TV remote control for a week. It wouldn't be a bad idea.
I would do the opposite: play the XI who will start the play-offs and instruct them to practise the perfect game, with the wonderful luxury of it not mattering. Try all those things you can't do when you need the points – take risks. Leave two forwards up the field. Try to beat a man from time to time. Dammit, we could even attack the near post or try to score more than one goal when we don't absolutely have to. If we make mistakes, at least we will be getting them out of the way at the right time.
That would be a game I would like to see. I'm pretty sure, however, that it's not the one we'll get. Hursty has pledged in today's Telegraph to play the team which wants to be out there, and leave the rest to the remote control. Fascinatingly, Hursty comes as close as he's ever come today to saying he would like to play the away leg of the play-offs second. We know you hate home games, Paul – it's OK, you can just say it.
The play-off dates are finally settled and Town, very annoyingly, have to play Thursday and Sunday. Policing was apparently the problem. Down in the south-west Bristol Rovers must avoid playing at home on Sunday 3 May, when Bristol City play their last home game against Walsall and celebrate their own promotion. Similarly, on Monday 4 May every available copper around the Humber is in Hull for the visit of Arsenal, or at Beverley races.
Can anybody tell me why we can't play on the proper day and let the police sort their own problems out? Do we even need police these days? Thursday–Sunday. Think of Carl Magnay's knees.
There will be a minute's silence tomorrow for the 30th (I know) anniversary of the Bradford fire. Now your faithful Retro Diary has lived closer to Valley Parade than he ever has to Blundell Park. I used to be able to see the ball through the open corner between the kop and the Midland Road stand from my bedroom window. I have a slight soft spot for City, not least because of a shared hatred of Leeds, but they share with Town both a very strong municipal identity and a tendency to stick with their team in large numbers despite horrific underachievement, albeit on a slightly different scale.
By the way, Heginbotham didn't burn the place down himself in 1985, and the suggestion is shameful. If you're old enough, there's a good chance you watched the fire live on TV, in the days when they didn't automatically hit the off button when something went wrong. It might do to remember that there are worse things in football than not getting promoted 'til next year.
Anyway (ahem) for us, Jolley and Robertson are out, as is anybody who doesn't want to play. For them: yeah, right. Kick-off is 5:15 – I know, when do you have your tea? I predict we'll finish third. UTM.