Cod Almighty | Diary

Brace

25 February 2020

Having spent part of yesterday queuing in the rain for Scunny tickets, Tuesday with the sun on my back Tuesday finds Casual Diary feeling chipper.

Despite a day from hell - courtesy of Cross Country trains and leaving my phone in Cleethorpes station booking office - neither the Swindon defeat or the after-match interview left me frothing. The first is because, if you take out 12 minutes, we looked good; even the Swindon fans say so. The latter is because I haven't heard it.

As a Sunday league player, I never understood why, when you came off at half time 3-0 down, the manager and players would indulge in discussing whose fault it was. It doesn't matter: what needs discussing is how you are going to get three goals back. It's the same with post-match analysis: learn and move on. I avoid Twitter on a Saturday, win or lose. One evokes hyperbolic optimism: something I'm not noted for. If we've lost, I need no help being mardy, as the idiot trying to push a trolley through a packed train on Saturday can attest.

I trust Ian Holloway to be competent enough to learn from the defeat, and address the issues.

So we move to tonight's game against Newport County. They aren't my favourite club. It's not the play off defeat. It's not that two out of the three times I've visited, the games have been appalling, and played on an awful pitch. My problem is about poaching favourite players: heroes if you will.

I'm not thinking of Padraig Amond. While I did like Podge, his release was also indicative of the monumental bollocks Paul Hurst (He shouldn't escape blame) and our John Fenty made of our return to the Football League. I was well past heroes by the time he went to Hartlepool; too many of them had left by then.

No, when I first started watching Town in the late 1960s, I was a budding keeper. This was largely due to being the youngest. Also, our house on the Nunnie had a perfect piece of grass verge, approximately six feet by two, in front of a hedge the same width but four feet high, making a perfect goal and diving area. Consequently my first Town hero was John Macey, our goalkeeper.

In those days footballers were just normal people like us. John would sometimes visit our house with Ron Sharp. Ron was loosely connected with GTFC. He did the barrow which took confectionary and crisps around the cinder track at Blundell Park. He also ran Clee Juniors, the area's premier junior team. Our kid was a star performer for them.

However, after a full season of hero worship, John transferred to Newport County. No more visits and bowls of porridge or cups of tea. He was replaced by a young Harry Wainman. My mother, equally distraught at John's departure, spent two seasons blaming him for every goal scored. It could be a worldy George Best would have been proud of but it would still be poor old Harry's fault. I concurred.

So that's why I don't like Newport: they stole my hero. Luckily he was replaced soon enough by Sir Matt Tees - my all-time footballing hero - but the first cut is the deepest, and there's no forgiveness.

I don't expect many changes tonight. To be honest, and continuing the keeper theme, the prime candidate for the drop would be the club captain from Saturday's game. I once made the mistake of stating online that I don't like dogs; the avalanche of abuse I'll get for suggesting that our shouty skipper might benefit from a rest will be of the same level.

There. Said it: off you go. It's just an opinion; we're all Town aren't we. Is that a question or a statement? That's one for another diary.

UTM