Cod Almighty | Diary
More than 2 million people die worldwide every year because of their jobs. Where's the war on work?
9 August 2017
Among the many objectionable things about modern football culture is its obsession with blame. Its apparent need for the anger resulting from adverse outcomes to be directly specifically towards a person or an organisation. In healthier, more stoical times we could meet even relegation with a resigned chuckle and get on with things. There might be a grumble or two, but there was no hint of the kind of orchestrated campaigning for sackings and takeovers that we see today whenever a club finishes outside the play-off places.
And just as, say, Arsenal fans will now be expected to respond to a second failure to qualify for the Champions League by forming a phoenix club, so we have reached a point when supporters can no longer deal with an issue as fundamentally beyond human control as the weather without apportioning some kind of blame to one or more humans.
If you take a step back from this and look at it objectively, it's hilarious. Non-football supporters mostly tend to assume that football supporters are idiots. And when you witness football supporters getting angry with someone about the fact that it's been raining, if you're honest with yourself, that assumption seems to have very little going against it.
Your original/regular Diary isn't just laughing at Derby fans who are taking last night's deluge as evidence of Town's 'tinpot' status. I am laughing at Grimsby fans who have done the same thing in the past when our own opponents have had to postpone or abandon matches because of the weather or a floodlight failure. I am also laughing at the idea that any or all of this sort of performance is undertaken simply to get a response, or a 'bite'. I am laughing at this – as opposed to laughing with it – because the 'banter' game is as much and as egregious an aspect of modern football's knobhead culture as the blame game.
No, you're right, I didn't get much sleep, as it happens.
Right, so the Derby game has been rescheduled for Tuesday 22 August, and I'm guessing Zak Mills' suspension for his daft sending-off last Saturday at Chesterfield will now have to be served at home to Coventry this weekend instead. It is Coventry this weekend, isn't it? I'm struggling a bit, to be honest.
In actual almost football news, Town have given a two-year contract and the number nine shirt to Jonathan Hooper after either a successful trial or the exhaustion of all other options. In response fans of Hooper's most recent club Port Vale have been queueing up on Twitter to laugh and tell us all what a waster he is. I suppose we can fall back on Slade's fabled insistence on a 'work ethic', and the similar stuff we heard about Jon Nolan and look how that turned out etc etc. But it's probably only 'banter' anyway, right?
For better or worse, Hooper will be available for this weekend's visit of Coventry (it is Coventry this weekend, isn't it etc etc) and I expect Town's famously fair and even-handed fans to support him unequivocally and unconditionally, or at least once he's done a bit for the Telewag about how pleased he is to be here and he's heard great things about the supporters and can't wait to get started.
Also in contention for the Coventry match (it is Coventry, actually, I've just checked) will be Diallang Jaiyesimi, a young winger who has joined on loan from Norwich City for the rest of the season, presumably to fill in for the long-term injury to Jamey Osborne and the hopefully rather shorter one to that lefty who came in from Port Vale whose name I've forgotten but went off injured at Chesterfield. Come to think of it, their fans all said the same thing about him as well, didn't they?
That'll have to do. If you want something else to read, here's a good thing about Town v the Cleethorpes Chronicle. I'm off for a nap in the bogs. See ya.