Cod Almighty | Diary

Regular / original Diary is away, the mice can play, or at least get away with long paragraphs

23 June 2015

No one has ever had cause to ask Middle-Aged Diary the standard fan's questionnaire question "If you could go back and watch any one game, which would it be and why?". This is just as well, as I am never quite sure how to interpret the question; and my career in politics was cut short as, when I'm asked a question, I am prone to answer it, rather than the question I'd like to be asked.

Does the question mean go back in time and watch a match from history? That is relatively easy in general terms. Obviously I want to be back in the 1930s when Town were a force in the first division. If I was allowed a few matches, I'd want to bring the attendance at Old Trafford in 1939 up to 76,963. On Sunday I stumbled on a picture from the semi-final reproduced in one of last season's programmes. To a contemporary fan, the scene is astonising - the thronging terraces, the fans lined up to the very touchline, the roofless stands - especially to one whose daily journey takes him past the modern home of Mammon United. However, going to the trouble of constructing a time machine for the pleasure of watching Town lose seems a little extravagant.

I want to see Glover scoring, and Tweedy saving and Bestall prompting. I want to know what a full Blundell Park was like. I want to see the Mariners winning. That's all general. No particular match stands out but taking a pin out, and consulting my vague knowledge of 1930s football, I see we beat Arsenal at home in 1935 and 1937. I'll take one of those, at least until I can check who was actually in the team on those days, and who scored.

Does the question mean matches one might have attended but for some reason didn't? That gives me a wide choice as I've never lived closer than Manchester to Blundell Park, and have never learnt to drive. I was living in Torquay when Town broke Newcastle's 100 per cent start to 1992-93. In other words, I could scarcely have been further away while remaining in England.

I'll take that one, unless the question is about being able to re-experience a match with a proper appreciation for what is going on. A couple of weeks after the Dobbin game, I travelled from Torquay to Luton. It meant an early start and then a liquid lunch. Luton had ended their ban on travelling supporters but the prices for the away end were extortionate. I went to a cheaper "neutral corner" and watched, my senses numbed, as a particular Town team at a peak dismantled Luton. I'd like to see that game again, shelling out for the away end, and with one one or two pints replaced by one or two sandwiches in my stomach. As it is the thing I remember most from that day is going to see Mark Steel in the evening, and him opening the gig by saying he'd been at Newcastle a couple of weeks before: "Wherever I do a gig, they've just been beaten by Grimsby".

To re-live the experience of a game - to go through the same emotions once more - is different again. I guess then you start to fall back on Wembley: the lump in my throat and the tears seeping down my cheeks as Macca, in particular, took to the pitch. Then the growing sense that this would not, after all, be a day when Town failed to rise to the occasion, finally capped by the single blinding moment of realisation, the roll-over surge of celebrating a goal and a victory in a single second. The suddenness of the golden goal caught the Wembley marionettes unawares and meant that our celebrations, the team's celebrations, all our celebrations, were unscripted and spontaneous.

I wasn't there but it sounds like we also managed to overcome the deadening effects of Wembley's events mismanagement last month. Its a testimony to the power of such moments that it too joins the list of games in my second category of games I wish I had been part of.

So there we have it. Two lines on a questionnaire turned into a small essay. But its summer. We have time. How would you answer the question?