Cod Almighty | Diary

Byddwn ond yn canu pan fyddwn ni'n pysgota

22 September 2015

To the Racecourse, and the biggest match of the season so far, at Wrexham. The Dragons have won all five of their home games to date and sit third in the Conference table, five points above the Mariners.

Let Middle-Aged Diary lay his cards out on this one. Apart from raging Cymrophobes, all right-minded Mariners should be hoping for an end-of-season summary that reads "Promoted: Grimsby Town (champions), Wrexham (play-off final winners)".

The concept of the 'proper club' is one that is probably abused more than it is used. If you mean "We've got lots of fans, and once upon a time we won things", you need to take off your shirt and make sure you haven't got a Leeds badge on your chest. But there is nothing more proper than a fan-owned club determined to build sustainable success after years in which their very existence was in peril. A club which has been both the beneficiary and the source of the sometimes difficult concept of fan solidarity.

If you are going tonight, you may see some signs you cannot read, and some announcements may be made twice, the first time in a language you do not understand. Get over it. Pretend you are on holiday. Wrexham and Grimsby are both towns whose football clubs have a special place in the community because of the hard and perilous work on which those towns were founded. There will be a minute's silence tonight in memory of the Gresford disaster, a strong enough reminder that what unites us crosses all national borders.

Twelve hundred years after Offa's Dyke, entrenchment is still the name of the game. Both Paul Hurst and Craig Clay are playing the 'prove the doubters wrong' card in their pre-match interviews. That is something of a regression from attitudes towards the end of last season.

The current mood among fans seems to be "not bad, but not good enough". It is frustrating to watch Town, because we can see that we have a squad that is capable of much better. It must be even more frustrating for the players and Paul Hurst. Let's hope that very soon they set about not so much proving anyone wrong but all of us right.