Cod Almighty | Diary

Déjà vu

19 December 2016

Miss Guest Diary writes: I was chatting with Retro Diary before Saturday's game about the pros and cons of diary duty, and he reckoned that he and I had the easiest slots to fill. He because he gets to preview the match on a Friday, and I because I can always write about the game on a Monday. But sometimes I really don't want to write about the game: I'd rather just forget Saturday and look to the future.

Today is one of those times. The match at Doncaster had disappointment written all over it before it even started. The build-up of excitement on social media, the size of the Town following, the banter with opposition fans about the importance of the game, even the atmosphere under the stand before kick-off – which would have been more appropriate to a cup final than a league game – were all just a bit too ominous. And then to realise when watching the warm-up that Omar wasn't even in the squad – out with a thigh strain, apparently.

We've seen all this before, haven't we?

For me, it brought to mind the FA Cup match against Ipswich at Portman Road in 1993. With 3,000 Town fans there, it was the best atmosphere I had experienced at an away match match up to that time. But most of the singing and chanting barely survived the kick-off when it dawned on our fans how much better Ipswich were than Town.

The mood wasn't killed quite so abruptly on Saturday, but conceding in the second minute definitely dampened our enthusiasm for a while and the obvious deficiencies in some of our players drew forth a lot of shouted criticism. Some of it was deserved, but much of it was not. And as for the idiot who threw a bottle at Berrett, words fail me.

One big bonus was the inability of two idiots sat near me to get a chant going about the Yorkshire Ripper, despite trying a number of times. Thankfully most Town fans seem to have left that despicable behaviour behind.

The difference between Saturday and the game back in 1993 was that then we drove home to Watford and I could forget all about the game until the arrival of the Telegraph, which a kind friend in Grimsby posted to us every week. With diary duties looming today, I felt obliged to listen to Marcus's post-match interview – still very upbeat – and dip my toe into other news sources. Despite my boycott of #gtfc on Twitter, some of the bile leaked into my timeline from retweets and responses.

I get exasperated by those people who insist every time Town lose that "this is the worst performance I've ever seen". Either they don't go to many games or have the memory of a dead goldfish. Halifax last year? Braintree 2011? Oldham 2004? And many, many more in the last few years. And then there are those who are already calling for the manager's head because we have lost three games in a row.

Oh no, catastrophe! Town haven't lost three games in a row since... since... last spring.

I admit losing to Crawley last month was a bit annoying, but 1-0 losses to two teams who are currently third and fourth in the table – one of whom was in the play-offs last season and the other was in the third division – is nothing to get het up about. The manager is currently working with a squad he did not put together – which my other half likes to call "Hurst's stocking fillers". When Marcus has had an opportunity to shape the squad himself – which might not even happen to any great extent until the end of the season – it will be time to judge him properly.

Though I personally enjoy the large crowds and exuberant atmosphere at games, I have some sympathy for a friend who has said on more than one occasion that he preferred it when most away games attracted the usual Town two hundred. Given that this season we have an average away following of 1,234 and took more than 300 fans all the way to Plymouth, I have pondered whether the larger the crowd the greater a disaster it can seem when Town lose.

It's like that old philosophical question about perception and reality: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? So if Town lose a match and only 200 people are there to see it, how much does it matter? I'll leave you to ponder that during your Christmas celebrations.