Cod Almighty | Diary

It's Marlon Broomes!

11 October 2016

Wicklow Diary writes: Welcome to today's billy-no-news diary. I hope to get you marvelling at how I stretched it out to three scrolls (don't panic – smartphone finger scrolls, not the lengthy Dead Sea variety) rather than having you wish I hadn't bothered.

Here we are with real football basking in the spotlight as the Premier League takes its fat backside off on an international break. I love these international breaks – a chance for Football League clubs to show fans what they are missing. Town themselves used the opportunity to showcase an expansive and attacking style that awed thousands into silence at the weekend.

A Premier League winter break is a blooming super idea too. My Whole Game Solution™ is for football to take a two-week break from the Premier League and then give it up permanently after that. To research whether similar should apply to international football (and to keep the kids happy), I took in a qualifier in Ireland this week.

The ear-splitting sound after the winning goal will live with me for years. Literally. It wasn't the roar from the crowd but the tinnitus-inducing sound system turned up to eleven. The ball hadn't even hit the net; the fecker must have been sat there with their finger on the button like a coked-up Donald Trump.

I won't resort to gags about clowns dressed as international footballers scaring and scarring people across the country, but what a circus. The 'wacky' DJ warming the crowd up beforehand and at half time, the celebrity massacre of the national anthem sang at a different speed to the crowd, and the seizure-inducing digital advertising hoardings advertising everything but medicine to treat seizures. This isn't a moan about modern football. These are facts. That's without the crowd's repeated half-baked attempts at the Icelandic Viking clap.

International football is football in the same way as my Donegal Catch fish supper is a supper of fish caught off the coast of Donegal. You're probably thinking "here he comes with a space-filling analogy", and you'd be partly correct, but stick with me. I just found out about Donegal Catch frozen fish and I need to tell someone. It's a trail of lies but it's a trail of lies with context that passes through Europe's Food Town with a connection to GTFC. I say lies; they'd say it's just a lesson to read the small print. Then use it and the accompanying 11-digit EU source codes to do an hour of internet research.

I put the wrong DVD on Saturday to celebrate Phil Jevons Day and had to sit through Michael Owen beating us 3-0 in the 1997 Anfield dress rehearsal

I know I shouldn't be buying frozen haddock, but let's put that aside for now. As a family with split Grimsby/Ireland loyalties, who do we go for on the weekly shop? Shop local with Donegal Catch or help pay Omar's wages by picking Young's? The former is sold by Green Isle. What could be more Irish than Donegal and Green Isle?

Well, recently I found out it wouldn't even qualify as Irish under the international grandparent rule. Donegal Catch is caught in the Atlantic and packed by Fenty's old muckers Five Star Fish in GY, and as a final kicker, Green Isle is based in Leeds. Oh, and some of the fish isn't caught at all: it's farmed in Chile. At least it's a win-win for GY businesses on the weekly shop.

Our antidote to all this muck is of course the Mighty Mariners. Even when they're in such a drought I put the wrong DVD on Saturday to celebrate Phil Jevons Day and had to sit through Michael Owen beating us 3-0 in the 1997 Anfield dress rehearsal.

I could do analysis on lack of goals and the last time we went five games without scoring from open play. I think we called that August when we were in Division Two. I could ponder why we went to the league leaders intent on winning the game yet seemingly went to a relegation-placed club for a point. I could add up the league goals scored by Tuton, Jackson, Hoban, Jones, Alabi and Tomlinson and draw a graph showing that Hursty's loan strikers have combined for one goal in about 700 bustling appearances.

Instead let's mention a Town side that's averaging six goals a game this season. The reserves play York this afternoon at Blundell Park at 2pm. The Town team has already been announced. No sign of the Minstermen details yet but rest assured they will field several of Town's summer 2017 signings.

York are in the absolute horrors. The diary was in hangover mode in May but we still took time to warn them to expect abject fuckedness this season. With the parachute payment burning a hole in their pocket, they had the pick of the non-League toy store. Inexplicably they went digging in the damaged goods box and pulled out the Richard Brodie wind-up action figure. With those levels of intelligence it's not a total surprise to learn that yesterday manager Jackie McNamara was sacked and Jackie McNamara was appointed caretaker.

This basket-case move is right at home in the world of football management. Just 39 managers of the 92 have been in the job longer than a year. Imagine trying to succeed in that environment. Never the chairman or owner's fault is it? Those guys hang around for years.

When you start the merry-go-round it's a tough one to stop. The debate for long servers like Paul Hurst is whether he's kept on because he is good or whether he's good because he was kept on? Whether John Fenty learned from the futility or the financial cost of giving managers an early hook, I'm happy to give him credit for sticking with Hurst.

Of course, the few teams like Town with the sense or fortune to stick with their manager are pulled into each change elsewhere. October is always a popular month for chairmen to get antsy, and Hursty will no doubt be fielding more questions like those linking him with the Shrewsbury job (you'll have seen their caretaker-manager fill the screen if you clicked on the Phil Jevons link earlier. Pay attention, there's a test at the end). I shudder at the thought of looking for another manager and will happily, on occasion, question Hurst's tactics like those at Exeter and his goalless loans for a few more years yet.