Cod Almighty | Diary

I can't see the Dock Tower or smell the sea from here

30 September 2015

Wicklow Diary writes: All my gaskets blew years ago. They started popping during a six-week period in the spring of 1987 and the last popped when Lennie Lawrence went to the casino and put us all in the red. However, if I had one left I'd have blown it when I read the team to face Southport on Saturday. Having declared that Podge had been omitted for tactical reasons against Wrexham, here he was benched again. It is of added importance to Irish Mariners important that Podge plays. Aside from his goals shooting us to promotion, every clever run, tidy lay-off or perfect finish erases a little more of the memory of our last Irish striker, Barry F Conlon.

My first thought was I'd love to have time to pop down to Cheapside to watch these training sessions so I can see what Hurst sees. To see Deputy Doig directing traffic through the cones while the manager catches Amond or Craig Clay taking turns to bag up puppies and toss them in a stream. Later it emerged from Podge that he isn't fully fit and that's why he didn't feature. If delivered at 2:30pm, that news could have prevented me stomping round the place until Clay's cracking opener. It was my own fault. If I'd read my own diary last week, lately team selections have made more sense as further facts have emerged.

Resting our number ten makes even more sense when you look at the calendar. We have four games in eleven days, three at home. I was a bit naughty and had a look at the other contenders' fixtures in this period. It's not a stretch for a part- time optimist like myself to see that if we win all four we could be top. Isn't it nice that Podge should be fully fit for these games?

Amid all this, I am sure of one thing about Paul Hurst – he doesn't give a hoot what we think of him or his selections. The fact he made it as a professional footballer given his physical stature should tell you that this is a man who doesn't heed conventional wisdom. He doesn't listen when he's told "no" or "you can't". Not only did he defy the no doubt countless scouts who saw him and thought "not big enough", but he went on to play 450 games across three divisions. That takes great belief and single-mindedness to go with the skill.

Plus, he must have been hard as nails. When he speaks dismissively of Omar "always having something strapped", I think it comes from an attitude that would only resort to strapping to re-attach a limb after a tackle. In August he mentioned that the last resort to diagnose Scott Brown was to "cut him open and have a look inside". He said this with the relish of a man who would do the job himself if Scott were short on his Bupa payments or didn't want to get hit with the excess. 

As Middle-Aged Diary pointed out, Hurst is not perfect – bringing in loan players in with zero game time to replace regulars is tough to understand. If we were getting players in from Arsenal and Chelsea instead of Luton and Barnet, then perhaps yes. Add to that the fact that we are overlooking promising young midfielders of our own. When Andrew Newman donated to Operation Promotion to sign for the season, it was half-jokingly suggested that he could get a run-out when we have the title sewn up in March. Unfortunately the same joke may apply to Clifton and Venney before they are given a regular run.

Then it seems every week that there's an interview about some bogeyman journeyman who has been sent to destroy us. It doesn't have to be complicated. Put your best side out and let the opposition worry about you. But as I say, I can get excited and throw the toys but Hurst doesn't care. You could even be enough of a bellend to start a Twitter account called @hashurstgoneyet, surely the cheapskate version of hiring a plane to fly a message over a game. It won't change Paul. And you have to admire that. Alone, it doesn't make him a good manager. But it's certainly a facet of all good managers.

Town's recent jaunts to the north-west made me feel uncomfortable. Not for the clubs we played but for another in the area. Whenever I see FC United of Manchester move a division closer to us I get that knot about turning down tuppence-ha'penny shares in Google or not starting my pension until I was 40. What if Town had jacked it in and started from scratch a few years ago? Taken a different option on the "Fenty or death" offer? I think we could have (and who knows, still might) make a great phoenix club. Not the Brian Potter type either.

I know I shouldn't be glib about folding the club. Devon Diary has given us excellent insight into Torquay's sorry plight and it seems Northampton are the latest club to be under threat of financial ruin.

FC United make me uncomfortable for another reason. Not only have they formed a new club but they've built their own stadium in just ten years. They have 4,000 members and have raised the bulk of the cash themselves. Like a ten-year Operation Promotion. I admire clubs like AFC Wimbledon and FC United. Clubs that have grown through the hard work of passionate, dedicated, intelligent people. GTFC has people like this in the club, the Mariners Trust and the fan base. So when it comes to the new stadium, what are we doing wrong?

I've been to Manchester. All built up, it is. A football team on every corner. I've never applied for planning there but I bet they have rare newts and nimbys to beat the band too. And yet FC United – an idea conceived 15 years after we started looking for a new ground – are in their own stadium and just a division below us. That's not bad luck or crap councils or even nimbys. What is it? Whatever it is certainly should be a source of shame for all of us connected with GTFC. Our favourite project, the Cononco, the Fentydome, the New New Stadium. The one that has been almost 25 years in the not-making. 

I am like Woody in This is England 88 at work. Stuffed into semi-formal clothes clicking on this and approving that, when I'd rather be out running around a field swiping the heads off dandelions with my daughter.

You know it might be time for a change when the only two things you look forward to are lunchtime and home time. Sounds like school again, doesn't it. Endless projects with weekly meetings and status updates and minutes filled with buzzwords. Forms and plans to be completed along with reviews of the weekly performance metrics blah, blah, blah. And a glowering project manager with halitosis who chases you round the building with a sharp stick for updates.

Having said that, these projects get to completion and the project manager might even manage a smile as he displays a detailed graph of the progress. So where is our stadium project manager with the sharp stick? Our stadium updates tend have little progress and difficult to fathom terms.

Now I do not wish to heap the blame on John Fenty. Like Paul Hurst is slowly learning as a manager, I think Fenty is learning as a chairman/majority shareholder. The stadium saga started long before he took the helm. However, this reminder of his other team has him starting last in the grid with a lot of people before he even opens his mouth. The Tories, eh? The shower in power signed up to their party in the 80s. If you're a forty/fifty-something Town fan, Waters, Drinkell and Moore brought you to BP and kept you there ever since. Fifty-something Tories have heroes too: Thatcher, Tebbit and Brittan. Actually I wish hadn't made that association.

Nonetheless, the association leaves me cynical and sceptical. Tories make a good career of telling people they must do something for their own good when the bulk of the benefit is actually directed elsewhere. You can add to their crime sheet the latest madness outlined here by Devon Diary's Clark Kent alter ego. 

The latest incarnation of the stadium plan also contains absurd logic. We are moving away from the cramped residential area around BP to a stadium that will be potentially financed by... £200million worth of houses being built all around it. We have been told the move will "safeguard the club for future generations". If this is the case, picture yourself years from now complaining about the traffic as you make our way to a game surrounded by housing estates, B&Q and Comet. "Look, Dad – I can see the stadium roof!" "No, son – that's either the filling station forecourt or a hotel full of first-rate conference facilities". After 25 years and counting, is this the legacy we want to to leave?

The driving attitude seems to be "build this thing somewhere because it has to be better than Blundell Park". If we are to move, let's make it something special, something that those future generations will be proud to call home, just as we are with Blundell Park. Use our energy and vision and not settle for second best. A vision like Nigel Lowther's. You may not agree with all of it but if your alternative is a field on a bypass, I don't want to hear it.

The biggest joke, for me, is the name "Community Stadium" that has been attached to the Peakses Parkway project. Few areas need community help more than those around Riby Square and Cleethorpe Road.

And all the while, Blundell Park decays and rusts. I played in a Chairman's Challenge a few years ago. My awe at being in the BP dressing room was diminished slightly when my brother-in-law (not a Town fan yet but up for a kickabout whenever and wherever) saw the shower/bath area. "What are those?" he scoffed. "I want Town to draw Arsenal in the cup just so that I can imagine Ozil's face at having to use that bath." BP has been in limbo for nearly 25 years. At a stage in the old gal's life when it needs love more than ever, it is almost neglected. The club's finances and its "imminent replacement" have seen to that.

I know all the reasons cited for a move but my heart still tries to rules the head. For all the reasons to move, there are 115 years of history to keep us there. Our quest reminds me a little of Boston – not our county neighbours but the baseball Red Sox in the USA. For years they attempted to relocate from a residential area, citing their unique but antiquated Fenway Park as, among other things, a financial drain to maintain and an obstacle to the team's success. Eventually they resolved to remain and embarked on a programme of modernising their facilities without losing the fantastic charm and character of the venue. At about the same time, they won their first championship in 86 years – proof in their case that success and stadia are not necessarily linked.

Fenway Park is now regarded as a national treasure – a rare link with the past without any of the ubiquitous corporate naming shenanigans. It's a real home and draws people in even during the times when the team isn't doing so well. This is in a country where stadiums are regularly replaced by a soulless bowl that could be anywhere. A bit like Glanford Park. But we can't knock Scunny. In a year or two they'll be two-nil up on the stadium scoresheet.

Let's end on happier notes. Scott Brown is pain-free, the GTFC sticker album is back and Blundell Park has been awarded the coveted Park Lane space on the new GY Monopoly board. Where's Peaks Parkway on there, I ask ya?