Cod Almighty | Diary

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5 May 2015

In the delirium that immediately follows your team making it through to a Wembley final, some things are easily forgotten. One of the most important, it seems to your original/regular Diary, is that going to Wembley is, in fact, shit.

Well, come on. Be honest. It is, isn't it?

I suppose mostly there's Town's failure to compete at any of the three 'showpiece' finals they have taken part in since the Glorious Double Of 1998, which with the benefit of OH MY GOD IT'S SEVENTEEN YEARS' hindsight now seems a complete one-off. (OK, two-off.)

But then there's the awful music and overenthusiastic PA announcer, which contribute to the grim, forced-fun, office-party feel of the whole event. There's the aeon or two of time it takes to get there. There are the ticket prices, which take more piss than the sample lab assistant at the Tour de France. There's the admin fee for the ticket prices. There's the admin fee for the admin fee for the ticket prices. And there'll be Fenty in Trafalgar Square doing his groovy dad routine.

No, I'm excited really, honest. I'm even thinking of growing my hair into an Ollie Palmer. But if I wrote lots of nice things about being excited then I wouldn't be doing my job.

Here's one good thing, anyway: the 2015 Conference play-off final may not be blighted by the abject lack of atmosphere that made the 2006 fourth division play-off final and 2013 FA Trophy final such dispiriting experiences. (Although Town's performances at both and the unseasonal freezing weather at the latter didn't help.) Whisper it quietly, but this time there might actually be some noise.

What kind of noise? Well, after the fantastic vocal backing given to the Mariners during Saturday's semi-final second leg against Eastleigh, we, um, saw on Twitter or something that section 111 of the Wembley will be Some Kind Of Designated Singing Area. Early anecdotal evidence suggests that Town fans requesting tickets in this area will be subjected to a telephone singing audition, with an X Factor-style jury at the other end of the line assessing callers' ability to reduce an entire melody to a single note, assess distant offside decisions while doing the Poznań, and recall the entire lyrics of Benny the Docker after nine pints of Stella Artois.

In other news today, a football manager has been scandalously caught on camera being enthusiastic about his football team, and please stop going on about Benny the Docker because I'VE BEEN WATCHING TOWN SINCE 1979 AND I'VE NEVER HEARD BENNY THE SODDING DOCKER while in other news tomorrow, former GTFC and Bristol Rovers defender Andy Tillson will tell the Grimsby Telegraph his loyalties will be a bit divided at the final and both teams are massive and deserve to be back in the Football League so he just hopes it's a really good game.