Cod Almighty | Diary

I'll see your Maslow and raise you a Gramsci

23 June 2016

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

It so happens that Antonio Gramsci was being held in a prison by Mussolini when he wrote that. But he might so easily have been looking at Grimsby Town social media. He might also have been taking a bit of a peek at a political campaign in which the Eton rifle, the stockbroker son of a stockbroker, and Michael Gove, aged 48¾, claim to be leading the disenfranchised in rebellion against the establishment, but we'll leave that for another place.

So the Grimsby Town of 2015-16 is, if not dying, at least moving to Hartlepool. The Grimsby Town of 2016-17 is not yet ready to be born. It is hard to fall in love with names on a squad sheet, still less blank spaces. No one ever sang "we've not yet got a number 10, no number 10. I just don't think you understand".

All we can do is quietly remember Toto, Tait, Arnold and Pádraig Amond (alt+0225, one last time) and reflect on the truth in the old saw that it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Middle-Aged Diary shuts his eyes, sees Arnold, chest to the sky, running towards the corner flag, and the image, a month old, is already in sepia.

They were all the future once, a future about which we had our doubts. Now they are part of the past, but a recent part, easing the bitterness from long-lost triumphs. The memory of the pale face of Wayne Burnett at the advertising hoardings feels closer to me now than it has since about 2005-06.

That was the season when we outplayed Derby County in the League Cup. Yesterday, we drew them again.