Cod Almighty | Diary

Bobby Moore was England's Paul Futcher

25 November 2016

Retro Diary writes: I need to start today's diary by mentioning an exceptional centre-half who passed away at a criminally young age. Strong in the air, clinical in the tackle, his reading of the game and distribution were impeccable. I refer, yes, to Bobby Moore.

Yesterday someone described our own Paul Futcher, who has also tragically left us at no age at all, as "Grimsby's Bobby Moore". You've got to be kidding. For me, compared with the serious business of Grimsby Town, supporting England is a trivial and often annoying diversion. For me, and I suspect for you too, Bobby Moore was England's Paul Futcher.

If you were lucky enough to see how easy Futch made defending look, you'll know that the comparison bears no irony. He was a player about whose mastery there could be no difference of opinion – indeed, no dissenting voice is ever heard. Yesterday's news caused deep sadness for Town fans everywhere, and took us back briefly, like almost nothing else could, to a wonderful, lost age.

So how do we cope with moments like this? Well what does a football manager always say when something goes wrong? They say we have to "respond". A tribute of some kind to Futch is certainly in order. And how do we come to an accommodation with such a sobering blow to our most treasured memories? Well, we never forget. How could we? We learn, and we go out and make some more memories. It's actually all we can do.

As it happens, we are poised quite well in that respect. Optimism for the future of our great club is currently brimming over. It's as though the clock has been reset, but this time round knowing what side our bread is buttered, and with extra determination to enjoy the ride. The twists and turns which will become our kids' most precious memories are waiting just over the next brow. It's a great place to be.

While Town's support has been bigger in the past, positivity among fans today is probably at an all-time high. One wonders if we can keep up this amazing enthusiasm indefinitely. It's a nice idea, but perhaps it's more reasonable to expect a little reversion to the mean at some point. It isn't quite normal, after all, to be happy all the time. A culture of celebration and fun, rather than one based solely on results, will be the key to longevity.

Carlisle on Tuesday night – despite looking better than us – failed to exploit our fundamental weakness which is, of course, playing at home. Bignot's half time team talk of "Come on lads, I've got an office now and I'd rather like to keep it" led to a second 45 where our individual talent marginally trumped Carlisle's organisation and industry, and the goals occurred in an order that made you feel much better about the draw. I must say, I feel better about draws nowadays anyway, now that they're more like an occupational hazard and less like a tactic.

I've had 'Tender' by Blur stuck in my head all week. Being an old git, Blur came considerably after my time, and I admit I didn't know the source of the Omar Bogle tune until I asked someone young to point me in the right direction. If you've ever tried to write a tune, you'll know that the fatal error is to overcomplicate things. You can, of course, push simplicity too far. Let's not mention Plymouth's extended rendition of John Cage's 4'33" last week. But the best crowd-pleasing anthems are those that don't think outside the box – that nigh-on implode with their lack of musical adventure. That point at which a tune gets so inane that you'd feel thoroughly ashamed to have written it is probably about the right level for maximum public approval.

That level is certainly good for football crowds, for whom a simple pentatonic scale represents the full extent of their comfort zone. If someone had told me this when I was 16 – that in music you make more money by doing less – my life might have been very different. (Pay attention kids – I'm giving you this one for free.)

Omar is lucky that his name fits consonant-perfect into one of the simplest, banalest, most fits-all songs ever to grace the popular canon. Now we have the song, it means, of course, that Omar can never leave. If I ever had to listen to Leeds or Sheffield Wednesday fans singing Omar's name to the tune of 'Tender', I might have to undertake a world record-breaking attempt to physically stuff something in their fat mouths individually.

Our enigmatic old friend Dale Vince has been at it again. Some of us – although we seem to be in the minority – think he gets a lot of things right. Criticism of protection of the environment, let's face it, makes you sound a bit of a nutter. Unfortunately, the things he gets wrong are those which tend, as football fans, to upset us the most. Like not understanding what a football club actually is, which is to say, a communal expression of shared identity by people from the same place. Vince, of course, thinks that it's a loss leader for a business, which you can bugger about any way you like, and try to make fill a bigger conceptual space than it actually does, at the expense of competitors who would make a much better fist of it. That's really why nobody likes them – not that Dale probably cares.

But wouldn't you know it, Vince has pulled another bit of genius out of the hat, by getting award-winning architect Zaha Hadid* to design Forest Green's new stadium. It will apparently be a bowl design with audacious curves, be constructed entirely of wood (making it the only one of its type), and, it goes without saying, its running will be entirely sustainable. I'm wondering if Zaha Hadid would like to design ours too? It would be a better gig for her, surely, to have ten thousand seats' worth of extra capacity on which to impose her curvaceous whims. And whatever she came up with, you can say with absolute certainty that it wouldn't look like four coloured plastic egg boxes.

Tomorrow it's Crawley. Crawley eh? What can you say. Exactly. It's handy for Gatwick. But which way to go round the M25? Gah. With Pompey and Donny up next we need to be winning this one. If only life were that simple.

For us, Ben Davies is not quite ready and Sean McAllister is still out. For them, nobody seems quite sure whether Conor Henderson is still in the (rather small) building but they have our other ex, Matt Harrold, who always has a goal in him. UTM.

*Zaha Hadid herself died earlier this year, but her company is still in business.