Cod Almighty | Diary

We'll see you all next year

30 December 2015

Just as your original/regular Diary still feels the effects today of a huge Christmas dinner and several days of drinking with barely a break for baby changing, so I'm also still pondering that magnificent outpouring by Retro Diary back on 18 December. You know – the one where, paradoxically, our fifth-tier status coincides with a sort of golden age for Town fans which, despite the frustrations of non-League, we'll look back on with enormous fondness once we're back in the 92 and enduring one-nil defeats to Rochdale in the devastating bleakness of Peaks Parkway.

It's true, isn't it? None of us expected it to be this much fun. Granted, those first couple of seasons were mostly hard work. And there are a few Town fans who couldn't wait to go to places like Histon just so they could tweet photos of a small, homely ground alongside wearying clichés like "tinpot" and "shithole", with much the same johnny-big-bollocks outlook that made, say, Wolves fans such attractive company at Blundell Park not a decade earlier. But for the open-hearted and open-minded there's an abundance of pleasure out there, once you've got past the kiosk staff at Hyde calling a chip butty a "chip muffin".

And to the list of non-League's redeeming features can be added the joys of the bank holiday derby. Before work broke up for Christmas, I was nattering with some colleagues about plans for the festive break. And when I mentioned that I'd be watching Town give a spanking to our closest local rivals, in front of a large, noisy and more than usually partisan crowd, full of seasonal spirit and singing, the response was one of envy – from fans of Burton Albion, Sheffield Wednesday and Sunderland.

I've never quite understood how football allowed the bank holiday derby, in the top four divisions, to be quietly abolished at some point between Britpop and Twitter. And I'm still in hysterics about those Impies asking the Football Conference if they could have their home game against Grimsby at some other time of year because Town's annual triumphs at Sincil Bank were really starting to spoil Lincoln's Christmas. But Monday's satisfying dispatch of the anti-football team from down the A46 is another reminder of just how much duller football becomes the further up the leagues you go.

Owt else happening? Almost a decade and a half after the Diary introduced the daily digest format to online Towndom, the club's superb new official website has followed suit with a tidy summary of the very latest news from inside BP. It's basically about tickets and loanees – the future destination of Conor Townsend, of course, being our key concern here. Paul Hursts, as you'd hope, says he'd like to keep the King$ton Communication$ left-back on the right side of the Humber after Townsend's loan expires on 9 January, but it looks like he'll have his work cut out.

That'll do us for now then, but if you're not ready to move on from the sausage rolls just yet, gorge yourself on another excellent set of match photos from Grimmo snapper Lee Blease. Merry rest of your Christmas and a happy non-League new year. I'll see you again next Monday.