Cod Almighty | Diary
What did Alan have in his pocket?
17 April 2019
#gtfc on Twitter after a Town defeat can often be a worthless and soulless experience. Snarling, gnarly tweets about a clueless manager, a shit formation and a meandering midfield mean the sweet spot after a match is best to be avoided. Even after a win, the hyperbole is just the same: unrealistic and clouded.
For Thunderdiary, #gtfc is best during a weekday. There can often be hours of Twitter silence, but you know the day will be punctuated with some news about a Gold Bond winner, a CA Diary and some Telegraph clickbait.
Sometimes you get some retweets that initially didn't have the #gtfc hashtag, and this week the statistical behemoth at @experimental361 tweeted out that just ourselves and Blackburn out of the 72 league clubs are mathematically guaranteed to play in the same division next year.
By my reckoning, the last Football League season where we were mathematically impotent with 4 games to go was 2007-08. Back then Town had been sitting fairly pretty, only 5 points from the play-offs after an Easter Saturday win at Mansfield. Town then contrived to lose their remaining seven games as their Johnstone's Paint exploits took their toll on a squad Buckley described as having to 'drag to Wembley'.
As it turned out we would have had to win all of those remaining matches to sneak into a play-off spot. Further analysis had to be aborted due to Buckleysackedmikenewellfentyshouldersneilwoods26gamesburtonbluesquareifyoudontlikeitdontfuckingcome.
Of course, the other daily staple on Twitter is the magnificent @onthisgtfcday. The amount of love and dedication that goes into this account makes me smile and the tweet today regarding that raucous Scunny derby win in 1990 was no exception.
This was a tumultuous game. Scunny had much the better of it, and should have won but for the confusion over striped shirts. Andy Tilson would have been sent off in most other games so wouldn't have been able to smash home the equaliser, but the unbridled joy at Cockerill's winner carried us through to promotion that season.
It's not just games that @onthisGTFCday tweets about. There are plenty of other nuggets too. I was enthralled to read about Bob Cumming's 1985 testimonial yesterday, as Town played Southampton. At the time both clubs were in rude health. The Saints had finished second in the first division the season before and were sixth when they travelled to a ninth placed, Division Two side. It's amazing that this game was played during the regular season with both teams still mathematically in with a chance of success.
What's more amazing is the programme tweeted by @OnthisGTFCday got Bob's name right. Not a Cummings in sight, the Grimsby 'S' strangely quiet that evening. Of course over the years we have had Cummings, Rodgers, Handysides and more but the Grimsby S is not just a football phenomenon.
The daytime treat that is David Dickinson looking at people's junk was at the Town Hall recently and for those who were keen to see how much their 1976 marble ashtray was worth were helped into the building by the following sign:
