Cod Almighty | Diary

I’ll be talked of in these pubs by the people who are here

27 May 2016

Retro Diary writes: Come one you people, lying there with the hot sun on your eyelids and the daisies tickling your ears. Put that cold drink down. Yes, I know you're in that phase of endorphin hangover. I'm there too. But talking about football doesn't stop.

On the way back up the A1 for the second consecutive week last Sunday, the sunset was an absolute stunner – much better, even, than the one the week before. Funnily enough, all I could think of was how much it reminded me of the controlled explosion I'd like to perform on the FA Trophy.

So what the hell just happened to us in the last fortnight?

With the squad already looking like it will be substantially different for the next, League (let me say that again – League) campaign, we can start to take stock of what we just lived through.

Sunday 15 May 2016, the Forest Green game, was more than just a football match. Indeed it was more, even, than just a promotion. It was the day we rescued our town from the abyss – and who knows, it could have been our last chance. We may not have saved the world, but we certainly saved our world.

That's how monumental it was, and that's why the madness of that day will never, ever be bettered. And we finished up exiting the division though the tightest trapdoor in the whole of football.  

In doing so, we've extricated ourselves from the sucky-hole of death, into which we must never again be pulled. A quagmire, indeed, into which many clubs have disappeared and never resurfaced. But the suckiest soul- and spirit-sapping piece of suckiness in the whole sucky mess, the FA Trophy, made sure it came back to give us one last piece of grim reality. It is – along, perhaps, with ten-man defences that waste time from the kick-off and Ross Joyce – the very epitome of everything that makes non-League such a horror to get out of.

But let no-one say we didn't take the Trophy seriously and play our part like good members of the non-League community. We did. We are, quite plainly, too noble for our own good – but not quite noble enough to either fluff it in the first round (oops), or piss the thing and cheer everybody up. But we've escaped its clutches at last. We survived its fixture congestion and boring winter Saturdays in B&Q, and shall do our best to put the two miserable Wembley defeats to the back of our minds. But now, ladies and gentlemen, the FA Trophy has left the building. Please, please, nobody invite it back in.

Actually it didn't spoil the season, because nothing could. The play-off final in the sun was the season's last fling; the perfect – indeed, better than perfect – end to the season. For a time after that day, everything was singing angels and world peace, set to last all summer long until the reality check of next season.

But the summer of love was to become the week of love, as we re-entered Wembley in that disheartened way of someone who's lost their wallet at a tourist attraction and goes back afterwards to look for it. It was one encore too many, and far too soon. Still, it's better to have had the best summer ever cut short, than never to have had it at all. Nothing's ever going to spoil that day.

We re-entered Wembley in that disheartened way of someone who's lost their wallet at a tourist attraction and goes back afterwards to look for it. It was one encore too many, and far too soon

In order to try to make non-League finals day more enjoyable, I went early to watch both games. The first, the Hereford/Morpeth match, was unusual for having the biggest discrepancy I have ever seen between size of crowd and quality of football. Both teams of rather unathletic-looking amateurs set about each other with gusto, and in the end the game was great entertainment.

Chris Swailes – the scorer of Morpeth's first goal, their equaliser – became the oldest player ever to score at Wembley, at 45. Swailes had overcome heart surgery to get there, and scored with, yep, his chest.  In the end, the team with less talent but more organisation and spirit won it, and therein, perhaps, lies a lesson for us all. I have no idea whether the Hereford bull was paraded around the pitch beforehand as planned – I got there too late. But what a shame it didn't happen a week earlier – walking a gigantic lump of beef past Forest Green fans would have been too delicious to miss.

Between the two games, one side of Wembley emptied and the other filled up. Almost nobody, or so it seemed to me, watched both games. So it was very cheeky indeed of the FA to announce the day as a triumph for non-League, with an attendance upwards of 46,000. In my understanding, you're not really allowed to add two completely separate football attendances together, but hey, that's probably just nit-picking.

In the end, Town's lacklustre performance was much more typical of the season as a whole than the heroic exploits of the week before. For what we hope was the last time, we were unable to combat basic organisation and a rather mild defensive tendency. Sitting there as the spitting rain drifted under the Wembley roof's vast rim far above, you couldn't help wondering what lies in store for Town in the fourth division.

Actually, I think we know that the standard up there isn't that much better. The average physicality and level of organisation may be that little bit more consistent, and defensive errors may be punished just a bit more ruthlessly. The top couple of teams may be really quite good – although with three automatic promotion places on offer there's no need to give up on promotion too early. There's plenty of room at the top.

So allow me to make a prediction. Town will start the season by gaining a creditable draw with the team that goes on to finish bottom. We will have a ‘see how it goes' approach until Christmas, during which we'll mess about with the team a lot, and by showing a lack of urgency will fail to finish off sides we are dominating. In early March, we will realise there was actually nothing to fear from the division after all, and we can make automatic promotion if we win six out of our last eight games, which we will heroically fail to do. We will look back and realise that had we taken the thing seriously from day one, we could have been promoted rather easily. Don't ask me why I think this.

At the time of writing there's no additional news on comings and goings to report, over and above what we already know. It'll be an interesting summer – it will need to be.

From next season it will cost £20 to watch Town, with £18 being the new ‘early bird' price. Season tickets will also go up but not proportionally, with each game costing just under a pound more than it did last year. Most, but not all, concessions are up a pound. Junior season tickets will go up disproportionately (to £70), but my advice to the kids is to nag hard (tears will help) and the olds will pay.

You can get back to that cold drink now, and that general demeanour of contentment, self-satisfaction and gloating. Don't feel guilty about it – you deserve it, and if it wasn't you it would only be someone else.

Just need to say it again. YESSS!

UTM