Cod Almighty | Diary

The sun is out, the albedo is fixed, the aphelion of Venus is inside the zone

18 December 2015

Retro Diary writes: One of the great secrets of happiness is to realise that you're living in a golden age. What it's a golden age of, however, you won't know 'til it's gone.

Which may explain the slightly uncomfortable suggestion, expressed recently, that despite everything, we might actually be secretly enjoying ourselves down here in football's sunless depths.

Weirdly, this does seem to be supported by the evidence. Despite Tuesday's excruciating disappointment, we're still rather upbeat. While we all moan about specifics from time to time, I don't meet a single Town fan these days who seems viscerally or chronically unhappy. Maybe there are a few miserable troglodytes lurking indoors watching the Champions League on telly, having sworn never to enter Blundell Park again while [insert putative nobhead] is there. But they were probably never proper Town fans in the first place. Well they weren't, were they. Let Chelsea and Arsenal 'ave 'em, would be my view.

We all realised early on, or I hope we did, that forming a false attachment to one of football's handful of bloated behemoths is deeply uncool – indeed, illogical. If you're travelling back from an away game on a Saturday night and you find yourself sitting opposite someone in a football scarf on a train, you naturally ask them who they support. If they say Leyton Orient, or Morecambe, or Alfreton, you talk to them with interest. If they say Man United, you give a scarcely disguised shrug of disappointment and change the subject.

And it's not just that you can't bear to be told how crap Nani was today when you've just watched ninety minutes of the ball sailing over Lenell's head in the wind. There's pity involved too. Pity that this poor soul watches a team for whom triumph is so routine that disaster is the only available impostor. A team who have probably only moved four league places in that fan's whole life.

According to Wicklow Diary's most erudite of metaphors, for him, Sisyphus's ball is well and truly cemented to a plinth at the summit with a cable car for ease of access. It can't fall anywhere without someone paying for it to be put straight back, and at the very worst it will come gently to rest against the wall of its own overpriced visitor centre. This person on the train, you've quickly surmised, is going to have nothing interesting to say about life.

Achievement, as we know, is directly related to the amount of unconquered territory laid out before you. You can't beat a team in the cup who are four divisions higher than you without being in division five yourself – that's just a fact. Man United fans have everything to lose – they're just sitting ducks. Where's the fun in that?

Actually, let's face it, the only acceptable situation is to support your hometown team, whoever they are. If that's Man United, then unlucky, but fair enough. If it's Whitby or Truro, that's unlucky too, but the other way. The smaller your team, the more special you are, but only up to a point. If your team is too small, the rewards aren't great enough, and it could all seem a bit futile. You can't really get a good sweary chant together with a home crowd of 251.

At Town we should never underestimate how lucky we are. If Earth is the 'Goldilocks planet', Town are the Goldilocks team. We have it just right. We are below our proper station at the moment, that's for sure, but we have an identity which is strong and which we intuitively understand, and there are enough of us to have a great deal of fun.

When part-time opposition run out of the tunnel and look across to see the sky blocked out by a packed Findus stand, they're half beaten already. At away games we frequently outnumber, and always out-sing, the opposition. In division five we are a bona fide behemoth. But still the whole of League football lies before us to go out there and bring down. It's the best of all worlds, and by rights we should be poised for maximum enjoyment.

If someone told me with certainty that in five, or even ten years' time Town would be back in the League, I think I could really start treating this as a golden age. I must say, I particularly enjoy the novel fixtures – the teams I have to look on a map to find. Finding out about Solihull's history, and meeting the 'Moorons'. Listening to their Swiss keeper's raucous bellowing make a half-empty Blundell Park sound like a death metal gig. It's all so much more interesting than playing Rotherham or Peterborough for the thousandth time. The red kites and the autumn colours at Harrogate. The wigs at Woking. The regular sevens. It's brilliant. All of it.

There was always something horribly circular about League football anyway – they beat you, you beat them, they beat you again – sixty years pass, you beat them again. But we're free of all that now. We're exploring Britain's twiggy backwaters and listening to people who understand, and are passionate about, their own special places – and they're people who never usually get asked. And they're enjoying meeting us too. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we finish up at a ground that can only be reached by canal. And best of all, we're winning. Mostly.

But it's an uneasy and unsustainable situation. Our happiness is predicated on this being a temporary state. Whatever the situation is now, it can't possibly stay the same. The whole thing has got to go one way or the other, and actually that way has to be up.

That's why when promotion finally comes, it will be the greatest ever way to end a golden age, and one hell of a relief. I've never really known whether Hursty quite understands the monumental urgency for this club of attaining that top spot, and it slightly worries me. Too long down here and we could gradually degenerate into a Lincoln, or worse, a Gateshead (albeit funnier, more popular and with better dress sense, it goes without saying).

Tomorrow it's Dover. Dover are above us. You're right, that's a situation from our old selves' worst nightmares. But one day you'll look back from a piece of Peaks Parkway low-rise meccano with a view of a new housing estate through the corner as Town kick off a routine relegation battle against Peterborough, and there's a good chance the whole memory of Dover at Blundell Park will be suffused with joy.

For us, JP could be out for a while with his dislocated shoulder. All the rest are ready to go.

Merry Christmas and UTM.