The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

A goat died for this?

21 June 2017

Before the Mariners' return last year to the top 92 there were several aspects of non-League football from which we could draw some comfort and, dare I say, pleasure. If your original/regular Diary is honest I can't actually remember them very well now, is all. That doesn't mean they weren't a big deal, mind you. It's just that since having two children I can't remember conversations I had five minutes ago. Probably unsegregated grounds and stuff like that. Chatting to the locals at that FA Trophy tie away at Buxton. You know.

One of the things that is magnificently, unambiguously and infinitely greater about being Football League, though, is the fixture list. For one thing, it's actually scheduled properly, so you're not playing Hayes & Yeading United home and away before the end of October before your new team has gelled, and then having to face Fleetwood twice in the spring after they've spent another £400,000 in the transfer window on a dead ace striker who Darran Kempson, bless him, is never going to be capable of living with.

For another thing, you don't have to wait most of the summer for it. As of today we can start planning those trips to Lincoln, Chesterfield and Mansfield (assuming Steve Evans hasn't taken the club into liquidation by then). We can look forward to the precise date of a good following at the BP when Coventry come to town (assuming they're not boycotting their club or whatever at that point).

If all 46 fixtures amount to something you find a little on the tl;dr side, Town's new newly superb new official website, has helpfully if illiterately published some "Key Dates Dates For Your Diaries". Crewe away on new year's day? Ah yes. I've just remembered another of those nice things about being non-League: we always had something at least approaching a local derby on the bank holidays.

This in turn begs the question of what happens when the Tories belatedly get dumped on their arse and Jeremy gives us four new bank holidays. We'll need Boston United back in the League, I suppose, and King$ton Communications FC to suffer further relegations after being devastated by a windfall tax on excessive post-privatisation profits. Hey, stranger things have happened. Boston United being allowed into the League the first time, for one.

And that's about yer lot. We're taking for granted that, one way or another, Scunny and Town will be in the same division before too much longer, right? T'ra for now.