Cod Almighty | Diary

Town are big; it’s the floodlights that got small

24 July 2019

Miss Guest Diary writes: I got my first OAP season ticket this year – a nice price reduction, thank you very much – but it does mean I am now officially old. So I get to harp on about how much better things used to be: TV programmes, pop music, politicians and, it seems, Town’s pre-season schedule. Gone are the heady days of trips to Sweden and tournaments in the Isle of Man.

With Michael Jolley as manager, Town have only left Lincolnshire once in pre-season, for last night’s trip to Scarborough. Even Russell Slade, in his last spell with Town, took them to Devon. And they played 11 pre-season games that year, compared with six last year and the seven they will play this year.

It’s all very well for Jolley to claim that last night’s match allowed him to "get more time into" some of the "established" players. But the only ones on the pitch who I would hope to see in the regular starting line-up were Liam Gibson – who came off after four minutes because he "felt something" – and Harry Clifton.

As at Gainsborough last week, the rest were mostly youth teamers and fringe players. And after seeing the look on Sam Russell’s face when Gainsborough’s second goal went in, I’m certainly not expecting Ollie Battersby ever to be challenging James McKeown for the goalie’s jersey.

My other half reckoned the reason Town had such a slow start last year, winning only one of the first 11 games, was because of the lack of game time in pre-season. I really hope he is wrong and that it was more to do with having weaker players and a constantly shifting formation. And, to be fair, the performance last Saturday against Donny, one of the fancied sides in the division above, was quite promising; but the 1-0 scoreline was still only the same as last year.

Maybe the weekend’s game against Peterborough, who also finished near the top of the third tier last season, will give a better idea of Town’s form going into the new season. I won’t be there to see it, as I will be at Trent Bridge watching Nottinghamshire looking for what may be their first win since the end of April. Their form has been so abysmal this year that watching Town get off to another mediocre start would come as something of a treat.

One thing I will not be harping on about being better in the past is the floodlights. Sorry, the iconic floodlights. If anything could have made me jump back into diary writing over the last few months it has been all the lamentations on this topic.

Noticeably, these come from men of a certain age. Just as I am fairly certain no woman ever founded a classic car club or started a collection of old football shirts, I have not seen any female fans waxing lyrical about some lumps of old metal which are no longer fit for purpose. Like most women of my acquaintance, I much prefer things to be new and shiny, and mostly reserve my nostalgic regrets for people and places – and, of course, old TV shows.