Cod Almighty | Diary

You can bring a Hurst to Waters but you can't make this pun work

25 November 2015

Wicklow Diary writes: Tranmere fans had my sympathy this morning. Doing their best to support the case for increased parachute payments, they received a solid midweek tonking at a place that Football League dwellers have to look up on a map. That's step two on the non-League road to hell, and is tough to take after step one, which is of course "we'll piss this tinpot part-time league". I'm well past all that and on to step 79, in which I'm attempting to compose a Chinese proverb involving an optimistic fish and quicksand.

No, just kidding. With Town now a relentless winning machine, we just have to get the Dockside Stadium sorted. Once that's done, Cod Almighty will be able to pull up the tent pegs and retire to a snug in the Barge for pre-match pints – there'll be nothing left to write about. But you'd only think that if you believed that CA was set up in 2002 as some sort of deranged symbiotic experiment in football misery...

The aforementioned stadium is simmering towards an article of its own and the club AGM is not until an employed-crank-deterring and diary-scuppering time of 10am tomorrow morning (rumour has it that any awkward questions will result in next year's being held on a Humber fort at low tide). So, for current Town news we look to the past. Joe Waters is in town for a couple of events including a Mariners Trust evening with former teammates Phil Bonnyman and Mike Lester at McMenemy's on Friday night. Joe's talents are still providing amazing value for money – a fiver including food?

Yesterday, Joe joined George Kerr in a Mariners World interview with Dale. Despite having lived in the US for the past 30 years, Joe has retained that Irishman-plying-his-trade-as-a-footballer-in-England accent and even sounds pleasingly similar to Super Podge.

The interview was interesting for a number of reasons. For a start it features tantalising archive snippets of the Town squad looking dapper in suits and trenchcoats and laughing it up as the original Alan Partridge, Fred Dinenage, tries to interview George. If Town want to tease/extort more cash out of me now that I've bought every item in the club shop, they'll cobble together any similar footage and stick it on a DVD. I'm a sucker for anything along those lines. The Great Grimsby XI video provides a glimpse of what could be available – it's over 1.5GB in size so maybe wait till you're on the wifi to download.

There's been a lot of nostalgia flying about lately and I've made my share of mentions for the We Are Town book (still available online and at all good club shops). I don't want to get stuck in the past every week – but this is Joe Waters. Town have had some fantastic players in my lifetime but Joe tops them all for me. Argentina, Napoli and Grimsby Town had great teams in the eighties but they'd have won sod all without Maradona and Waters.

In short, I shouldn't have to find topical aspects to justify basing a diary on Joe but I will. In the interview, George mentioned how close he had come to losing his job in October of the third division title season. Five defeats in seven and a position in the lower half meant progress in the League Cup was forgotten. A Kevin Kilmore goal was enough to win at Gillingham and, according to George, saved his job. We'll obviously never know but We Are Town may have been 50 pages lighter had the board bowed to fan pressure and given the manager an early hook that October.

As well as the Dinenage interview, there is some great footage of Joe in action. The pace. The purpose. This is a man who tried to take every game by the scruff and didn't wait to see if someone else was going to do it. That's the link to the next topical bit. Looking at the teams that have won the Conference in our time here, what was their secret? Barnet are the exception – their trick was to be average but win 75 penalties. If you're not a collection of semi-talented, niggling spoilers (Crawley and Fleetwood) you need to have purpose to go with your method (Luton and Mansfield).

Since our boys will always be Corinthian in spirit, it is the latter approach that Town need in order to escape the division. Recently, the second half at Barrow, the first half against Welling and most of the game against Eastleigh provided proof that we can do it.

I don't know where the inspiration comes from. For Joe it looked like every moment and every surge were a chance to repay the fans who'd contributed to his transfer fee. If today's gaffer is looking for an effective incentive, he only need remind his squad of the indescribable, nameless horror they felt when Bristol Rovers' winning penalty hit the onion sack last May.

Let's take our cue from Joe. Purpose. Pace. It's not getting any easier down here. Let Tranmere and the rest worry about next season's moneybags parachuters.