The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Snooker loopy nuts are we

25 January 2018

Town were a massive 40/1 bet to get relegated when we checked this week. Those odds may have shortened after we put next year's Cod Almighty web hosting fees on it. It's not quite Lillee and Marsh betting against their team at Headingley in 1981 but it still feels offside. Look upon at it as a win/win for our critics if we stay up and CA is confined to moaning down the pub. Long odds, right? The bookies know best. Grimsby Town, too good to go down twice. 

Looking at our remaining fixtures, that sinking batting-collapse turns easy target into a desperate run-chase gone wrong feeling surfaces. If only the Germans played cricket, we might have a word for that. We only need 50 but the wickets are skittling. Now we're desperately trying to eke out leg byes to crawl towards what has stopped being a modest total. Three quick boundaries would tip things back in our favour but you can't see where they're coming from.

Maybe we can seek solace in the fact that the bookies have taken into account the deficiencies of our peers. By merely standing still you can make progress as all the other teams with idiots in charge carefully select the wrong gear and then speed past you in reverse. Remember, two thirds of the league voted for the Chunk-e-Trunk Trophy, a competition one step away from the farcicial scenario of Chelsea u21s gracing the final. These clubs take guidance from Shaun Harvey, a serial bankrupter of football clubs, and choose to be governed by him.

Is standing still beyond us though? Luton are the main beneficiaries this season of the general incompetence that is, after all, to be expected in the basement division of the league. We took four points from them last season but combine their modest improvement with our disarray and it might as well be Barcelona visiting on Saturday. To keep with the theme of our own progress relying on the shortcomings of others, the Telegraph has based optimism for Town fans in the news that Hatters striker Danny Hylton is crocked. Don't be fooled by the word 'striker', Town fans. This one actually scores goals: fourteen of them. At the current exchange rate that's the same return as eighteen strikers signed by Russell Slade.

Of course, it was Luton's reverse manoeuvres that saved us in 2009. And boy did we need saving. Four teams received points deductions. I only had Luton and Rotherham in mind for some reason, having forgotten that Darlo and Bournemouth were naughty too. Poor old Chester didn't bother reversing: they just turned the bus around and travelled at top speed out of the league with Luton. Despite finishing 90th out of 92, John Fenty was rewarded with a celebration on the pitch at Bournemouth, after we lost the game. Maybe he enjoyed it so much he figured he could get a repeat at Burton the following season. A sort of Munchausen by proxy majority shareholder.

Bournemouth haven't looked back since that day. Well, they have, but only to say 'crikey, we've come a long way since that Grimsby game, haven't we?'. Putting your club into administration and a foreign millionaire with a Bond villain name is the modern formula for football fairytale and incredibly Bournemouth were named this week as the 29th richest club in the world. I wonder if they kept a list of the people they welched on in 2009? 

Things are looking up for Luton too. Top of the table and plans for a new stadium. Like us they've been looking to move for decades. I like Kenilworth Road. It's been crammed on the last two occasions I've gone. Crammed and crackling. Much of their ground makes no practical sense. The entrance through a back garden, a jumble of styles and asymmetric lines with no legroom and pillars blocking your view. You realise how unimportant these things are when you go to pillar-less and atmosphere-less Colchester. Kerry Purcell described it perfectly last week as being like a morgue in space.

Kenilworth Rd is that sweaty, heaving basement club with the flyer-covered door. The one banging out your favourite tunes on an amp that is too big to a dancefloor that is too small. Someone just spilled a pint on you but you don't care because it's the original mix of Higher State of Consciousness. By comparison Colchester is a cup of crap coffee and a stale croissant in a late night service station Costa.

Luton see the vital ingredients of character and location in their current home and are keen to include them in their new home. Something special and worth moving for. Their only mistake is using the project to collaborate with the council and regenerate a brownfield site in the middle of their town. It will be paid for by an enabling development out of the town near the M25. Suckers. Don't they know that could never work? Their artist's impression doesn't even have fireworks. Amateur hour stuff.

What real news have we got then? Last night's Sporting Memories at Blundell Park event looked ace. Kris Green streamed some of it for those of us unable to get to Blundell Park and the playback is still available, so go check out Kris's Twitter feed for links. This is also a good time to plug again the weekly trust event at the club that Kris is running with Sporting Memories. If you know someone at a loose end on a Tuesday, it might be right up their street.

Kris has also written a nice account of this week's group. One sentence summed it up really well for me: It seems barely a family in the town wouldn’t have had some involvement in the club. It's a great example of the role the club can play at the centre of the community.

That's it. No news of the quality signings that the vote of confidence mentioned. Perhaps they actually meant articles about quality signings that Russ made for other clubs in the past. Russ has been complaining about high prices again, if he starts giving out about music today being just noise, he's officially turned into my aunt Nelly.