Cod Almighty | Diary

And do you still see much of Coia?

5 February 2016

Retro Diary writes: In every season there is a painful, demoralising moment when we realise that the leaders are unlikely to be caught. This year, that moment happened relatively early on, last week at freezing Gateshead.

Straight after the match I was pretty grumpy – we needed to get straight back on the bike, I thought. The last thing we wanted after that half-arsed flop was a free week and then a Trophy match.

But when it settled down I realised it doesn't actually matter. It's a different sort of season now. We might as well have a little break and start all over again, with a more 'see how it goes' approach, and lower aspirations. Let the injured players recover and the pitches dry out a bit. It will feel a little less urgent, and it might even be kinder to our nerves. We'll get into the play-offs, I have no doubt. Deep joy, I hear you say. But at least we've got something to cling to.

I have followed our own division for so long now, been an avid devotee of the twists and machinations of Conference football, that there is now a bunch of league clubs – our old adversaries – who I can't be 100 per cent sure what division they're in without looking. Were Town ever so anonymous – so buried in the bowels of the machine? I suppose we must have been. It made me wonder: is it actually us that's in oblivion, or them?

Our participation in the non-League has so far been a life-affirming hoot – one of the very best times to support Town. It's been an uncommon treat to be a big fish in a small pond. But it was never supposed to go on forever, was it. It can't go on forever, actually – not without either eventual success, or stagnating into something resembling [gulp] Gateshead.

It is permitted, even by the most hardcore purist, for a person to ignore their local non-League team and support their closest League team – that's why we Croft Bakerlings support Grimsby Town and not Cleethorpes Town. You are allowed to do that. So when Town were a League team I used to think of non-League fans as essentially different from ourselves.

They had a slightly contrarian bent, and somewhat different sensibilities. As a type, they were a bit sappy, with an overemphasis on friendliness and woollies, and there weren't many of them. Consequently, they had no idea how to do proper songs or crowd scenes. They were happier with less, much less, stimulation, and their main interests lay outside football, for how could they not. They surfaced only for TV giant-killing, then quickly went back to walking the dog, or banging their heads on their tiny stands.

So when Town went down, I really didn't want to be a non-League fan. Despite realising now that my stereotype was grossly unfair, I still really don't. But needless to say, having invested 42 years of emotional energy in the Mariners, if Town keep failing to get promoted, a non-League fan I will have to begrudgingly remain.

People break down into them wot does the Trophy, and them wot doesn't. Neither is a crime, and any attempt to guilt people into watching football when they don't want to is likely to backfire

This grudgingness, of course, is where dislike of the FA Trophy comes from, and why two thirds of our crowd don't turn up for Trophy matches. Ah yes, you sigh, the Trophy – on which so much has been said, yet so little reconciliation achieved.

Let's lay the cards out. Yes, it is a good and worthy competition, and we are not above it. We must compete in it with good grace, and if we win it we will be suitably thrilled. We were relegated fairly and squarely. We must always treat our opposition, and the level we're at, with respect. And if you're the sort of person, like me, who can't pass Clee Fields or Barrett's without stopping to watch football being played, you will still go along to Trophy matches, and possibly even enjoy the largely stress-free afternoons and lack of queues at the Mariners Kitchen.

But in the end, people break down into them wot does the Trophy, and them wot doesn't. Neither is a crime, and any attempt to guilt people into watching football when they don't want to is likely to backfire.

Personally, I think a healthy crowd for the Trophy says good things about us as supporters, on many levels. We are, after all, the best fans in the world, are we not, and we just love to see our boys kick that old ball about. So I would urge you to attend, but that's just me – I'm not going to knock on your door asking where you are if you think a tenner's too much and it looks a bit cold.

Two weeks ago, an Altrincham fan on their forum complained that the FA Trophy was no longer fulfilling its intended purpose. It is now, he implied, a plaything for wealthy ex-League teams for whom it presents little more than a pleasant diversion. What it should actually be, he says, is a chance for window cleaners and unemployed pipe fitters, and teams from village greens, to fulfil their dreams and get to Wembley. There is surely a germ of truth in this, and to be fair, the best two teams in the competition have already had the self-conscious good sense, by their team selections, to give lowly opposition a fighting chance, and in doing so (I'll stop short of saying 'on purpose'), go out.

In Cheltenham's case, we could perhaps interpret their hammering by Oxford City as a disrespectful capitulation of the distinctly 'johnny-big-bollocks' type. Alternatively, it could have been a demonstration of a deeper understanding of the competition in the way the Altrincham fan suggests.

In contrast, the words 'johnny-big-bollocks' and 'Forest Green' sort of magnetically repel, although the greenies certainly made their intentions clear by making nine changes before their Trophy defeat to Havant & Waterlooville. Such an act seems a little presumptuous for a team who have never in their history risen beyond the rather modest reach of the Trophy. I would suggest they were taken down a peg for that, had they ever been up a peg in the first place.

So far Town, the competition's last remaining behemoth, have gone against the spirit of the thing by staying in. And so tomorrow we try to shuffle a little closer to a season-extending Wembley date when we take on Havant & Waterlooville at Blundell Park. Unusually, this is not a novel fixture, a ten-man Town having brushed them aside 4-0, again in the Trophy, in the run-up to Christmas 2012. You may remember Havant & Waterlooville for no other reason than they romped to defeat in a fetching cerise. Even our most superstitious fan would say openly that we are expecting to win tomorrow, and hope that their away kit is a touch less eye-catching.

Hopefully, and I mean that, we'll be comfortably ahead by the closing stages of the game. But as Havant & Waterlooville's Westleigh Park is a mere nine-hour, 494-mile round trip, if we're drawing with a minute to go, then for God's sake can we just not-so-subtly scythe someone down in the box. You watch. Knowing how shit the refs are at this level, they probably won't give the penalty.

For us, Evan Horwood may debut at left-back. Dominic Vose turns out for Scunthorpe, making up in pay what he lacks in imagination. Tosser. As for the rest, well, it shouldn't matter, should it.

Other news – Bromley have sacked manager Mark Goldberg ahead of Town's visit on Tuesday, and all Conference games on the final day of the season (so, Tranmere away for us) will kick off at 5:30. UTM!