The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

on the eve of the eve of the new day

8 March 2018

Wicklow Diary writes: Now then, you Mariners. Most of the talk as we approach the weekend is still of the new manager. And why not? We're a little excited and I bet he is too. We've been through it often, so we know there are no certainties. It's going to seem difficult now that we've been drawn into a relegation scrap but fans and board can control the controllables by giving our patient support.

Regardless of results in the next ten games, for the board that will mean giving Michael Jolley resources and time. Appropriate resources that compliment the YDA blueprint. Some resetting of expectations might be required in the short term but this might not sit well if you feel like shouting, "Get yer wallet out Fenty, where's your ambishun" at the first sign of a bump. As original/regular diary alluded to yesterday, that's what has us in our current pickle. We may upset some of the meta football, plastic Premier League fans. As some rock sage once said when his band went all arty "We might lose some of the pop kids but we don't need them anyway." Actually, I just looked it up. It was Bono. Sorry. Look, if @baileymussell can use Coldplay in an excellent thread of tweets, I can use U2.

The pop kids can return when we get to the Premier League (I'm assuming that to be year six of Phil Day's five year plan) and make it difficult to get tickets at BP for us die-hards. Come on, we'll need something to moan about when we solve everything else.

In the short term I'm looking forward to being at BP on Saturday. Show-offs Port Vale boast a mere nine game winless run. Aspin's immovable object meets Slade's unflushable turd. Something has to give, Clive. Unless we draw of course. Longer term I'm considering the Jolley career path from his rather excellent interview with Matt Dean – check it out if you haven't already.

Does your brain often wake you up at 4am for meetings? Mine does. You probably know the agenda. First up is the guilt of stealing a pineapple chunk from the corner shop pick 'n mix when you were eight. The agenda escalates swiftly to what the hell am I doing with my life and how can I put it right? Most of the options that you cobble together before the alarm goes off either make little sense or are too difficult to entertain.

I don't know how Jolley came to conclude that he was swapping banking for football but I applaud the decision. He ignored the thousand reasons not to do it and hugged tightly the one that did, in the face of common sense and stacked odds. That's a hardness and resolve I love to see and wish I had. You could parallel it with Paul Hurst, who at four feet nine inches tall (he gets shorter every time I include this parable in a diary) was probably told a thousand times that he was too small to make it as a footballer.

That's pretty much it news-wise on a quiet Thursday, so... hold on, stop the presses!

Local newshound Liam Wood is hinting that the new boss might be about to swoop for a player.   

Rumour or not, it's dead exciting, isn't it? No. 

There's also a new Tommy of the Town strip up today so have a look at that. Oh, and the club offices were a soggy mess after the burst pipe but the staff have managed to get the Lincoln tickets on sale. Last up, the trust have released their survey results. There was a decent response and compiling the replies appears to have been a considerable task, so have a peruse. I'm going to have a look now. See ya.