Cod Almighty | Diary
In the greater scheme of things, I am nothing
12 December 2016
In the eight years since I became a parent, your original/regular Diary has learned several important lessons. Don't put your mobile phone down anywhere in the house. Don't give a shoulder-pag immediately after a feed. And most important of all, whether you're trying to get a kid to eat, or sleep, or just stop drawing on the wallpaper with a wax crayon, never assume that any apparently successful approach will ever work successfully again. As Mrs Diary and I cheerfully remind each other several times a week, it's all completely random.
From time to time I wonder whether football management is the same as parenting. You choose a team which strolls to a comfortable 3-0 away win against the runaway league leaders. You choose the same team again for a home game three weeks later, and they can't keep the ball for more than six seconds. Never assume that any apparently successful approach will ever work successfully again. In the end, for all the pseudo-science around motivation, tactics, and all the rest of it, gaffering a football team is quite possibly as completely random as bringing up a toddler. There's probably a bit less spontaneous vomit, but a similar amount of swearing too.
We've seen enough of the fourth division now to know that, contrary to what some folk say, it actually is a bit trickier than the Conference. In non-League we often found Town carrying two or three passengers and getting away with it. Back in the League, when players go missing from midfield as we saw against Portsmouth the other day, we'll get the runaround, and we'll not sneak the point or the cheeky win. As Mr S Meek sagely observed to me during Saturday's game, it's not like playing Guiseley.
In public relations terms last summer was – let's put this kindly – an absolute car crash for GTFC for several reasons. One was the club's decision to flip the Mighty Mariner role, selling off what was previously a paid job to anyone who'd pay for the privilege of doing it. Paul Hurst, shortly before his departure for Shrewsbury, lamented his lack of backroom staff compared to the set-up at similar clubs.
It is interesting, then, to learn that former Kidderminster manager Gary Whild is one of three people now working without pay for our club in unspecified backroom roles. Let us grant the club the benefit of the doubt, though, and assume that the recent return to the club of our head of youth development was secured through traditional channels, and not that Neil Woods won the bidding on eBay. That said, if Town were to auction off a couple of places in midfield for the trip to Doncaster last Saturday, the results could hardly be less effective than we saw in the first half against Pompey.
That's about it for now. If you're going to Marcus Monday, have a nice Marcus, and if you bump into the people who run Town's superb new official website, remind them to add the results of the last three youth team fixtures now that they've won one. Cheers!