Cod Almighty | Diary

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22 June 2017

You occasionally hear people saying – during a World Cup, most likely – that they should forget the 120 minutes of football and go straight to the penalties. You can be confident they are the camp followers of football; people who have have got caught up in the hullaballoo of the big event and are emotionally invested in the results, but not in the way those results are achieved. They don't want to watch the game, but don't want to miss out either, so they want to go straight to the pay-off.

Middle-Aged Diary actually hates penalty shoot-outs. If it's a game where the result is secondary to me, it's just monotony. Even if the result is settled by a spectacular save, it has none of the drama – the moment when you have mentally prepared for a goal only for the goalkeeper to astound you – becaue you know that, sooner or later, a penalty is going to fail. If I do care about the result, it's monotony mixed with agony. Unable to travel to the 2015 play-off final, I did actually stop watching for a while when the penalties began. Maybe I should have stayed stopped; I turned back on just in time to see Jon-Paul Pittman miss.

The penalty shoot-out against Bristol Rovers was preceded by a baleful period of extra time, both sides on the whole preferring to take their chances in the lottery rather than risk trying to win the game in open play. It's all too common.

For play-off matches, I'd consult players and coaches on abolishing the shoot-out and simply awarding the game to the side with the better league record. It's true that this would mean one side going into the game knowing a draw would be enough, but hundreds of such games occur every season with no obvious loss of excitement. It might be that those in the game would say the clarity of thinking for the side needing a win would give them a counter-intuitive advantage, but it is surely worth asking the question.

It wouldn't have done us any good in 2015, but it is ludicrous that after 49 games, a promotion place should be settled by spot-kicks. And if we'd gone into extra time knowing we needed to score against Rovers, it might just have done us an awful lot of good. 

An earlier attempt to minimise the influence of penalty deciders was the golden goal, a glorified version of the nearly-teatime playground call of "next goal wins it". In the professional game, the effect of sudden death was, generally, to make players still more risk-averse. But in the context of a minor pot like the Football League Trophy, it could work well enough. It certainly worked well enough in 1998.

As Exiled Mariner wrote to us, Wayne Burnett's inclusion in the Wembley XI is "a no-brainer". The only problem is there is nothing I can add to the thousands of wonderful words already given to the subject of his winning goal.

The Wembley XI is based on players' performances on their particular day, but let's reflect a bit more widely on Burnett. It might already have happened but I humbly suggest to the Mariners Trust that Burnett is worthy of an invitation to come and answer some questions in the trust bar one night. His experiences as a coach in lower- and non-League football would add insight to joyful reminiscence. This interview confirms he'd be very good value.

Burnett had the most spectacular range of passing I recall in any Town midfielder – Paul Futcher could run him close – but he was no showboater; he did his share of ground work. At Priestfield one night, after he'd drilled in on a couple of Gillingham players, won the ball and laid it off short to Stacy Coldicott, it was impossible (even for an admirer of both players) not to wish the roles reversed.

By then, Burnett's appearances were severely limited by injury, but when he could play, he was still the same player he had been in 1998. He came on late in a game long lost at Crystal Palace, and immediately gave shape to our whole team, simply by standing in the right places to receive the ball, playing it crisply and accurately then making himself available again. He had presence.

More forgettable are Town's defeats. Checking Tony Butcher's match reports, it seems my early anointment of Aidan Davison in goal in the Wembley XI might have been rash: Phil Barnes and James McKeown were man of the match in the finals of 2008 and 2013 respectively. Asked to name a man of the match against Halifax, Tony simply says: "You cannot be serious."

The trawling doesn't produce much we can use, except one surprise. We still have vacancies in central defence and left-back, and in 2008, Tom Newey played well on the left of a back three (and if Tony says Newey played well, you can be sure it is not out of favouritism). For a player who had started as a left winger then moved back, Newey was surprisingly much more effective in a role where he was allowed simply to hump it. He'd played well in the semi-final that year at Morecambe as well.

Newey in the Wembley XI? Let's check Cod Almighty's insurance policies first.

The Grimsby Town Wembley XI (so far)

Goalkeeper: Aidan Davison (v Northampton, 1998, subject to steward's enquiry)
Right back: John McDermott (v Bournemouth, 1998)
Left back:
Central defender: Aristote Nsiala (v Bristol Rovers, 2015)
Central defender:
Midfield:
Midfield: Wayne Burnett (v Bournemouth, 1998)
Right winger: Kevin Donovan (v Northampton, 1998)
Left winger:
Striker:
Striker: Omar Bogle (v Forest Green, 2016)