Cod Almighty | Diary
Those were the days
14 March 2016
Miss Guest Diary writes: For several years running during my childhood I spent a week of the summer holidays staying with friends in Selsey. Those who travelled to the game last weekend may have gathered that Selsey is about a 30-minute drive from Bognor Regis, and I visited the town many times back then. So the return on Saturday involved a lot of nostalgia but, as is so often the case, the reality failed to live up to the memories.
Bognor ticks all the boxes for a south coast seaside resort: shingle beach, run-down pier, novelty rock emporium, crazy golf, plenty of places on the prom to buy an ice cream or fish and chips. Sadly it all felt a little smaller and less exciting than I recalled. This is the perfect metaphor for Town's games in the FA Trophy this season, which have ticked Hurst's boxes of being professional and getting the job done. But the performances have felt so much smaller and less exciting than they could have been.
At no point has Town's play approached the exuberance of the FA Cup games against Harrogate and St Albans. Why? Could it be because, whereas Town have no hope of winning the FA Cup, they could, maybe should, win the Trophy? Does this weight of expectation lead Hurst to insist even more than usual on keeping things tight and professional and not scoring more goals than absolutely necessary? Whatever the reason, Saturday's was another such performance, where Town did just enough to win the tie in a flat and boring way.
To be fair to the players, I don't think the atmosphere in the ground helped. It was obvious that about 2,000 of the home support had either never been to a football match before or were supporters of other teams. The commitment of the opposition fans was nicely encapsulated during the introductions of their three mascots. Two of them said their favourite team was Liverpool and the other opted for Portsmouth. And one of them couldn't even name a Bognor player, choosing Coutinho as his favourite. Imagine if that happened at Blundell Park.
The 400 travelling Mariners did their best but, strung out on a half-open terrace and with no energy or aggression coming back from opposition fans to fuel them, the chants of support more or less fizzled out. You can always tell when a Town crowd is bored: they start making fun of a steward, and the match was barely half over before they were chanting "There's only one Harry Potter" at a poor lad with floppy hair and glasses.
Before entry into the ground my handbag was searched very thoroughly by a steward, down to the emergency socks in case the temperature dropped and emergency e-reader in case the game got boring (I was nearly forced to deploy both during the second half). So I'd love to know how someone managed to smuggle in two smoke bombs and a dozen toilet rolls. I suspect the mundane answer is that they turned up late and drunk in a big group and the stewards didn't fancy taking them on. As is so often the way, it's only the people who wouldn't break the rules anyway who get checked out.
All in all, a bit of a disappointing trip to the south coast. I was cheered a little on the drive home when, listening to a podcast of the Danny Baker Show from a couple of weeks ago, the first caller was none other than the original Cod Almighty Guest Diary. He related a story about a garden fête in California where he was pursued all afternoon by Wavy Gravy who coveted his tie-dyed T-shirt and where the 'local group' playing was Jefferson Starship. For those who don't know of him, Wavy Gravy was the 'scene-maker' at Woodstock – something Town could really have done with on Saturday. Or maybe Hurst could just have played Omar.