Cod Almighty | Diary

In the absence of insight...

13 October 2016

The upturn in Town's fortunes over the last two years can almost certainly be put down to the colour of James McKeown's jersey. Long may he continue to turn out dressed in pink.

Not really, no. But after original/regular Diary's observations yesterday welcoming that we have an experienced academy manager were followed a couple of hours later by the terse statement that Andy McMillan has resigned, the suspicion has been raised that someone at the club reads the Diary just so that they can engineer the opposite of anything we applaud.

For the record, Middle-Aged Diary couldn't quite get behind London Diary's call for a green goalkeeper's shirt. It's true that the chances of McKeown getting lost at sea are minimal. Unless all buildings along the coast do need stilts after all, and our next home game will end with the Main Stand and Pontoon goal slowly sinking beneath the waves while members of the Cod Almighty team rearrange deckchairs in a 4-4-2 formation, John Fenty shouts: "I told you we needed a new stadium," and, the referee's whistle having been rendered in operable, the teams play on.

Nevertheless, some traditions are at worst harmless and at best reinforce the place of the club in the town. Blue or deep red for me, and no number on the back.

If you have come here hoping for the inside track on why McMillan has decided to move on, you really should know better. You may speculate he is a York City "legend", and they currently have a managerial vacancy. I know nothing. I don't even have a friend whose cousin works at the bakers where McMillan buys a cottage white and a pastie every other day.

In fact, I am always amazed (for which read, occasionally bemused) by how Town fans can develop strong opinions on our backroom staff. Stuart Watkiss came in for stick for no better reason than having a name that could easily be bent to suggest grovelling. As for Graham Rodger, he held just about every role going at the club, including a caretaker-manager spell which produced the only highlight of 2003-04. This meant that when he got the manager's job 'permanently' (or as it turned out, about as permanent as McMillan's term as academy manager) he was so deeply and unaccountably unpopular that he might as well have sat in the dug-out with a note saying 'kick me' sellotaped to his back.

The only member of Town's backroom staff you are really allowed to have a strong opinion about is Dave Moore. Were Cod Almighty ever to release another T-shirt, it would surely be captioned "The Mariners' greatest moment of the century (so far)" and show our physio, arms folded, greeting Nathan Arnold's goal with a wry half-chuckle.

Long after Blundell Park has vanished beneath the sea or the bulldozers, Dave Moore will still be there.