Cod Almighty | Diary

I can't afford it, Phil

7 September 2015

Good day, and welcome to the week with your original/regular Diary, who is secretly enjoying the way, every time Forest Green Rovers win a game, they're effectively trolling all the messageboard Clarksonettes who are so militantly carnivorous that they despise any organisation declining to serve burgers that drip grease and blood. I mean, obviously, five years after they've been promoted to the Football League, they'll have become the next Rushden & Diamonds. But if you're going to do it, do it with green energy and sustainable, cruelty-free food rather than bovver boots, that's what I always say.

So with the 2015-16 season already being described by some as nine months of association football on a weekly or twice-weekly basis, how will Town end up doing? Eight games in to Town's great year of reckoning, we find our heroes on exactly half as many points as their hotly tipped vegetarian promotion rivals, despite a first away win of the season for the Mariners at Boreham Wood two days ago. But those who are say this season is unfolding just like every other season Town have spent in the Conference are clearly not paying attention. Shaun Pearson has made seven appearances and is yet to receive a yellow card.

Under-a-bit-of-pressure but-not-that-much-really Paul 'Hursts' Hurst has said something about trust and not trying to kid people. It's a bit more nuanced and interesting than your usual post-match interview so I'd recommend actually reading it this time. Also he isn't Nigel Adkins, so it won't hinder your efforts to wake up. The Cod Almighty team continues to press for the release of secret Department of Transport research on the hypothesis that the M180's abnormally high rate of accidents caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel is due only partially to the soporifically flat north Lincolnshire landscape, and that many more such crashes were caused when Radio Humberside listeners dozed off during post-match interviews throughout Adkins' term as manager of Scunthorpe United.

Yer man Hurstses has also spoken up in support of his goalkeeper James McKeown, who seemed back to something like his old self in Hertfordshire on Saturday. I am particularly cheered to see fans, too, get behind McKeown after a shaky start to the season followed a spell on the sidelines with viral meningitis. And when I say fans, I obviously don't mean the same fans who greeted the debut of Wayne Henderson – whose outstanding spell on loan from Preston went a long way to preserving the Mariners' Football League status in 2009 – with jeers and abuse every time his goal kicks were carried out of play by the gale force wind.

Yes, but what about this season? Are we heading back to the Football League? Or will the summer crowdfunding campaign turn out to be all operation and no promotion? Well, if you're given to prognostications and portents, Vancouver Whitecaps have just won their first ever Voyageurs Cup at the 14th time of asking – and after finishing runners-up seven times. The relevance? Some of their fans have adopted the Mariners as a second club after discovering who they were sharing the hashtag #gtfc with when they adopted it as a rallying cry in the run-up to the final.

And why? "Get the fucking cup", that's why. It might be one syllable longer than "we go again" but somehow it just feels that bit more concise. So there you go. The shit-out against Macclesfield might have felt exactly like most of last season all over again, but between Whitecaps' long-awaited triumph and Pearson's yellow-card renaissance I think we know better. August 2016: see you in the fourth division, suckers.