The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

An incomprehensible, massive timeless entity that goes forever in every direction and yet nowhere all at the same time. Like Matt Rhead

18 May 2018

Day 13. Still nothing stirring. Even all the season ticket barriers remain in place. You'd expect one or two to be broken by now. Last season we had crashing and smashing within a week. Who knew accountancy could be so exciting. Either as part of the fine print in his job spec or to get sales moving, Michael Jolley is giving the ticket office staff a dig-out on the 29th. That should get the figure of 575 season tickets exploding through the body of the pre-season in the style of the chest buster scene in Alien.

Those season tickets will include a game with the Imps of Lincoln City. Their defeat to Exeter City was more good news for fan-owned clubs in the wake of Wycombe's automatic promotion. The result was good news too for the banner makers of Lincoln who might get some more business for our visit to Sincil Bank. Long after the result of our March stuffing at Sincil Bank is forgotten, we'll be able to laugh at the banner from the game. "A New Era Dawning - Be Cast In Our Shadow For Eternity". Come on you Imps, it's bad enough sounding like a line from a hammy Nazi in an Indiana Jones film, but eternity? Thanks to power of G over L in the alphabet, you're already behind us in the 2018-19 standings. Alphabet standings? Daft talk isn't it? Still not as daft as that banner. Anyway, eternity is past, present and future. It's sort of an incomprehensible, massive timeless entity that goes forever in every direction and yet nowhere all at the same time. Like Matt Rhead.

Let's focus on the positives. Exeter are off to Wembley. Their ground re-development is progressing with the replacement for their fine old grandstand taking shape. We already know that Accy are on the way up with a title. It's 38 years since we won a title. 38. Sakes. Not only have they got a title, they've got the diggers in.

How can this be? They have traffic and houses in Exeter and Accrington. What voodoo is it that enables them to overcome these? Andy Holt (yes, him again) knows the score.

These sustainable and well-run clubs are moving forward by staying where they are. Not an enabling development in sight. Again, how? Treading carefully here but it would seem that they are, by most measurables, smaller than GTFC. Is it because sustainable means not spunking your budget on thirty five players a season just because you need to be seen to be 'backing the manager'.

Staying at BP not your cup of tea? If you think a modern stadium involves concreting over several fields to build a 4,000 space car park that will be used to park 600 cars once a fortnight, please leave the planning table. Don't take my word for it. Go to Colchester. Not the town, the detatched football club that plays in the empty stadium on the by-pass. 

There's nothing new here though and I'm not going to waste a Friday pretending there is. I'm a bloody exile anyway, what would I know? Nigel Lowther isn't though and Nigel knows the same voodoo as Andy Holt. He wrote about it 2012. He was speaking the same sense this week on Twitter.

The unfunny joke is, when the tricky brownfields of Blundell Park, Freeman Street and Garth Lane are spoken about by the club, the time frames are quickly dismissed for being too long. "Five to ten years for Freemo? We can't wait that long". How long have we been waiting for Peaks Parkway? We could be in Freemo by now if we'd kicked on when Nigel wrote that article.