Cod Almighty | Diary

Gardening gloves are just as good

15 July 2015

As your London Diary checked the #gtfc hashtag on Twitter as I rose this morning (as all Town fans do every morning, right?!), I felt a little bit bad as I didn't realise we played a football match last night. Obviously I would never forget a proper football match in the proper season, but nonetheless, I felt the need to repent (or donate to the pot).

Luckily, we won, so I managed to stop crying pretty damn quickly. In years gone by I would link to an article in the Telewag for a report on the game, but the last time I clicked on a Telewag link, 8,746 pop-ups invaded not only my computer screen but also my living room. The pop-ups were so ferocious that they stole my TV and also my children. I don't even have any children. That's how ferocious they are. Until the powers that be sort that stuff out, there'll be no hyperlinkage from me.

So, just before the game last night our number 1 stopper James McKeown, or JayMac as he is called by absolutely nobody, had to pull out because of injury. Turns out he has a stomach or back problem, but nobody knows. Surely they'd stick the yoof lad in goal? Yeah? No. Turns out the new keeper coach stepped in to guard the sticks. I like Hurst, you know that, but he seems reluctant to test the yoof keepers. Why is that? I need an answer.

I'm very much a goalkeeper kind of guy. Always have been. My first ever Town game was John Cockerill's testimonial and the only player I remember was Steve Sherwood and that weird boiler suit I seem to remember him wearing. Soon after that I then got obsessed with keepers and, more importantly, knowing the hierarchy of keepers within clubs. To this day, I still dream about a car ride with Peter Schmeichel, Gary Walsh and Les Sealey.

So I tried to rack my brains and think of a few second- or third-choice goalies that Town have had over the years. My mind seemed to draw a blank. Sure, we've probably had them, but none of them seem to stick out, and we've had some goalkeeping howlers in the past (see Forecast, Williams et al). Andy Love was probably the only second- or third-choice keeper I can remember from the last 20 years.

Even if I think back to the Wembley games of '98 I can see Aidan Davison in his orange kit, but can't remember where the other keeper was. Why do Grimsby have a second keeper issue? We've had a number of fringe players over the last few years who have hardly ever got games, so why can't one of them be a goalkeeper?

At Wembley just gone, we saw that Bristol Rovers nearly came a cropper when that 'Hart wannabe' should have got sent off, but they had Mildenhall ready. An arguably more experienced keeper with hundreds of league games under his belt. Had that happened to us, we'd have had to have put Shaun Pearson in goal. One of these days it's us that's going to have the cropper. Macca is amazing, but is only human. We need to get his back.

Right, I'm off to do some googling. UTM!