Cod Almighty | Diary

Omar comin'?

22 July 2020

Miss Guest Diary writes: I've been getting increasingly jaded about the whole football thing lately. And much of the tedious fare served up by the Premier League on TV hasn't helped to rekindle my enthusiasm. It's been so long since the mighty Mariners kicked a ball in front of us fans that I have begun asking myself of late how much I would actually miss it if I simply stopped going to matches in future.

In the last four months I've got used to not going to the cinema, not eating in a restaurant, not spending a night away from home, not making a weekly pilgrimage into Lincoln to buy stuff I don't need. All those things are once more available, but I haven't felt even slightly tempted to indulge.

Then I read yesterday's diary. Thank you Casual Diary for painting a picture of a possible future for the Mariners which made me want to be back at Blundell Park and almost brought a tear of longing to my eye. My own experiences of watching Town date back to 1990 so cover many of the same years and elicit the same sort of feelings. Though I do have a confession to make.

When I started watching Town I knew so little, and cared even less, about divisions and promotions and relegations in football that it was several years before I realised that Town were automatically promoted from the fourth to the third tier at the end of that season. And from the third to the second tier at the end of the following season. Which meant that, in my mind, we'd always been in the second tier until relegation in May 1997.

What has galled me most since then is that my ignorance robbed me of the joy which must come from experiencing your team gain automatic promotion. Sure, I've seen us win two play-off finals but I've also seen us lose two and I'd like not to have to go through that agony again. Having a manager who can build a team capable of gaining automatic promotion, whether it be next season or in the future, is an enthralling prospect. Town have probably got such a manager in Ian Holloway, but I worry that the virus-induced break to football in the lower leagues might have him scuttling home to the West Country with the job barely started.

This anxiety isn't helped by the current news drought: Town feel like a ghost club. While others are signing players and announcing pre-season friendlies – even Cleethorpes Town! – we have Matt Green trotting out the old 'must do better' line. If we don't get some solid news of preparations for the coming season soon, I'm going to start buying into that mischievous Twitter rumour of Bogle’s return.

Better that, I suppose, than another unnecessary shopping spree in Seasalt.