Cod Almighty | Diary

Good game, good game

20 August 2019

Think of the popular entertainer Bruce Forsyth and you will probably think mostly of that dancing programme on the BBC, and the majestic, Jimmy Hill-like extent of his chin. Earlier in his career, though, before everything became ironic, Forsyth was best known for his catchphrases. One of the many TV shows he hosted would begin with Brucey soaking up the applause of the studio guests, and telling them what a wonderful audience they were. "So much better than last week's!" he would add, every single week without fail.

Your original/regular Diary is reminded of this every August when the football season begins. At other times of the year, Town fans have settled in to the downside of our binary think-habit, and everything is irredeemably terrible. But in these early weeks of the new campaign, when everything still shines brightly, every single year without fail, we look at our team and remark on what wonderful players they are – so much better than last season's.

This tendency to perceive substantial year-on-year improvement early in the season is unaffected by actual results. However many points have been won, the team just looks better. James Hanson and Matt Green are better than JJ Hooper. These performances are more convincing. This season we'll kick on. It's different now. Really.

Well, maybe. Town look a bit more 'pragmatic' in approach; and significantly, there seems to be leadership in different areas of the pitch. This, I suspect, is what was missing last year when an ostensibly quite able team kept slipping into those dodgy spells and before you knew it a month had passed with zero points added to the board. Perhaps there is something in Jake Hessenthaler's acrobatic reinterpretation of defeat. But please, just let me try and manage my expectations a bit longer.

In a minute we'll look ahead to this evening's visit of Colchester to the superb new official Blundell Park, but first here's a plug for a new feature elsewhere on Cod Almighty. Neville Butt's articles are always a rewarding read, and there's no exception in his piece about the wider context of English complacency that surrounded the brief appointment in the 1950s of Elemer Berkessy at GTFC as the nation's first foreign coach. If you're lucky enough to have time, go and read it now. If not, be sure to bookmark it for later.

So, no potential changes to the starting line-up seem to be jumping out insistently for tonight's game, and Michael Jolley does seem to like an unchanged side. That said, there's a part of me that wonders whether, given last week's successfully experimental League Cup set-up, the manager might look to Jordan Cook for a bit of extra oomph in midfield and the ability to drive forward.

Colchester? It's one of those places I'd probably have barely heard of if they weren't lucky enough to have a team admitted to the Football League in 1950. Did you know they finished 10th in the second flight in 2007? No, me neither. Last season they won 20 times in the league but a ropey spell in the spring left them just short of the play-offs. Ropeyness has continued into the new campaign, with just one point from their first three games. You know where this is going, don't you. Familiar names include erstwhile Town loanee Brandon Comley, that nice Harry Pell, Paris Cowan-Hall from ages ago, and Omar Sowunmi, who we don't need anyway now that we've got Luke Waterfall, so there.

Good game, good game? Who knows. But in the end, this is the best possible time ever to go to the football. It's going to be a nice warm-ish evening in late summer, the pitch is pristine and lush, and the superb new official floodlights are getting rave reviews. The players are mostly fit and full of beans, and nothing much has yet happened to diminish the ridiculously inflated expectations we carefully nurture through July, like the tomatoes slowly ripening in the garden. When it's March and there's nothing left to play for, everyone's knackered, there are still nine games left but the season is dying, and it's still bastard freezing, tonight is the sort of fixture you dream of. Enjoy.