Cod Almighty | Diary

The one where it all starts to make sense

31 March 2016

Devon Diary writes: In the 2008 movie Hancock, the titular hero played by Will Smith suffers from increasingly poor performance the nearer he is to his former wife and fellow super-powered being, Mary. Actually, he doesn't just perform badly: it's far worse than that. He can barely walk, let alone fly, and in that respect is a little like Grimsby Town this season and our performances on the road. The further we travel, the better the points haul. Right?

"Hold on a minute," you might say, "Don't we usually do OK at Blundell Park? Surely we would lose every game there if this were correct?" That's a fair point, of course. But I would suggest that it's like the eye of a storm: all is calm at HQ and therefore this hoodoo doesn't apply there. 

I'm inventing the rules? Surely it's bad enough that I'm putting this much thought into a ridiculous analogy between my football team's haphazard away form and a similarly hit-or-miss movie without you doing it too. So just let me finish, and accept that I'm in charge here.

Look at our away results to date and the interesting thing is that it's not just proximity to Blundell Park which seems to be a key factor on how many points we bring home. There's also a clear north/south thing going on. Draw a line across the country at Birmingham and it's pretty much guaranteed that if we play south of that divide we're going to win. Which bodes well for Wembley, no?

It's not just me thinking about this. Fellow Town fans Grant Maconachie and Rich Lord are also on to it.

@gmacademic: "Clearly an up North thing - Alty, Heed, Halifax, Guiseley, Macc - Harrogate was just so posh it felt South"

Me: "Maybe you're on to something" 

@gmacademic: "Southport & Barrow are the only Northern grounds we have won at this season (BP excepted) in the league"

@RichMariner: "Other than Barrow we've not had much success in the northern away games. We're much better down south!"

Me: "Except Torquay"

@RichMariner: "True. I've also overlooked the win at Southport in the north... even then it has south in the name."

It's even clearer than that: when we're analysing data like this there are bound to be outliers and the likes of Torquay and Barrow are those outliers which we can disregard. We'll also ignore Harrogate because as well as being far too posh it was a cup game and we're only interested in the league.

See? We bring home nearly twice as many points per southern away game and although we've scored about the same up north or down south, the key is goal difference. 

Using this science (and Grant is a science teacher, which definitely adds weight to the argument) we can predict how our remaining away games are going to play out. We look likely to beat Cheltenham on Friday, which is great as I'll be there. Dover, Woking and Aldershot are also southern and bloody miles away from Cleethorpes so also look like away wins. Tranmere looks like a banana skin but maybe we'll defy the odds and finish the season on a high. We'll have a better chance too if Rich Lord stays at home.

Bearing all this in mind, if the final league positions are Cheltenham, Forest Green, Town, Braintree and Tranmere then we'll clearly be OK as we'll beat Braintree home and away and we'll win at Wembley because it's down south. Science is on our side. See you in the Football League!