Cod Almighty | Diary

Not yet a bridge too far

6 April 2017

Moss Rose, 11 September 2004. The new season, our first in the fourth division after 13 years battling bigger and brasher teams in the second, was scarcely a month old. Russell Slade's record as Town manager read won two, drawn one, lost four; not great but that excludes a stylish League Cup win over Wigan.

Strange how many names on the Grimsby teamsheet that day Middle-Aged Diary has forgotten: who on earth were the C Williams and P Robinson playing upfront? But Town played quite well in the first half, although the Jason Crowe goal which gave us a half-time lead came out of a defensive mix-up. The second-half was awful and Macclesfield won at a canter, 3-1.

All the goals that afternoon must have been scored at our end, but my memories of them are dim. What I do remember is the knot of Town followers – maybe five or ten of them – who reacted to the second-half turn-around with a display of red-faced, neck vein-bulging, finger-jabbing spite; no doubt they called it anger, or "passion". I've no idea what impact they had on our players, but sharing an open terrace with them was like being confined with a seething, spitting snake. They made impossible any response to the unfolding defeat other than cowed silence. Far from supporters, they killed the possibility of support.

"Are you happy to watch Town losing?" they would no doubt ask, implying you are less of a fan than them. The answer – "Of course not, but that doesn't mean I have to throw a tantrum" – like many answers nowadays, takes a little too long.

It was a time of change, and stoicism comes harder when you don't know what to expect. Booing had become the increasingly vehement soundtrack as Town slid down two divisions. More than a soundtrack; it had a material effect on our fortunes. It turned Darren Mansaram from an ungainly young colt with a hint of potential into a wreck. It hounded Paul Groves out of a club he had never represented with anything less than total commitment. Later, it would strangle at birth the management hopes of another noble Town man, Graham Rodger.

Harder to take perhaps than the long, slow, hopeless slide are those times when a faint hope of coming success is dashed. At Macclesfield, the win over Wigan had been followed by two defeats, and a first-half lead turned into a defeat. And at Accrington two weeks ago, the growing hopes of an away win were thwarted late. Only the harshest judge could blame anyone for the free kick or the goal conceded from it. But it didn't stop a plastic bottle being thrown in frustration and James McKeown having to keep goal in front of a growing murmur of scepticism for the rest of the game.

Against Doncaster, I understand, the five goals we let in after taking the lead were accompanied by two plastic bottles and further abuse of Jimmy Mac.

Marcus Bignot claimed that on Saturday the prospect of abuse influenced his team selection and his tactics. Personally, I think that is an excuse; the couple of incidents in the last two matches bear no relation to the excoriating negativity of a decade ago. If anything the opposite is true: his apparently aimless experimentation risks using up the goodwill that any new manager – except Graham Rodger – can expect.

What we know is that Bignot is, by instinct, a crowd-pleaser. That's fine of course, as long he knows that the only way to do that is by winning matches with some football worth watching. An aside, but actually once a team is coached to know what to do when it doesn't have the ball, it is more likely to win if it does play entertainingly: the 'winning versus attractive football' dichotomy is a false one.

There is no shortcut to our affections. Lawrie McMenemy was a bit of a flirt as well, but his dockside visits would be long-forgotten if he hadn't won a championship. And actually, Bignot comes across as a far more likeable man when he takes the trouble to explain his thinking than when he fobs off a question with a flippant quip. Radio Humberside might not like it, but perhaps he'd be better sending out someone else to answer their questions immediately after a defeat, and then open up when he's had a chance to reflect after the weekend.

We have six matches left to play this season. It's tempting to think there is nothing to play for, but the rot that ended Alan Buckley's last spell set in exactly during this part of the season, before running through into the next. If the disconnect between what Bignot is trying to achieve and what we hope to see is not to grow jarringly and damagingly wide, we urgently need a shared understanding of what our targets are for those six games.

My own hopes are probably not too different from yours: a settled formation, with experimentation limited, as far as possible, to giving different players a run-out in their preferred positions. If Bignot sees it differently, that's fine. I want him to do what's right for the club as he sees it. Just so long as he then communicates a sense of direction. Otherwise the small knots of frustration could grow into a tangle of hostility. And no-one wins then.