Cod Almighty | Diary

The good that people do

26 January 2021

But for Alex May, it is conceivable that Michael Jolley would still be managing us today, instead of opposing us at Barrow at 7pm tonight. It is, Middle-Aged Diary freely admits, a stretch, and it is unprovable unless John Fenty has a personality transplant. Perhaps it is a story for another day.

The evil that managers do lives after them; the good is oft' interred with their bones as William Shakespeare so nearly wrote. Most managers go through the cycle that first their qualities and then their weaknesses are exaggerated. Expressing a balanced view is generally impossible. Incidentally, it is often the people who claim to be balanced who make out like the paramilitary wing of the Liberal Democratic Party, and shoot down nuance. It must be a year ago now, when Ian Holloway was in his "breath of fresh air" pomp that anyone suggesting mildly that he might have handled an interview better were accused of calling for him to be sacked.

Whether Town would be better or worse off today if Jolley was still our manager is unknowable. The thing that would really have made a difference is a much earlier change of ownership at the club. Of course I do not welcome the possibility of a return to non-League, but a club under new ownership in the Conference has better prospects than a Fenty-run outfit that somehow scrapes 90th in the Football League.

The best of both worlds is still possible. If we can get four or six points from tonight and Saturday's game against Stevenage, the league table will look different, and even our players may look different: some at least we know are capable of far better than they have been showing over the last two months.

We have a new striker: Stefan Payne. He has played for 13 different clubs over a 12-year career, a couple of them twice. Perhaps crucially, one of those clubs was Shrewsbury Town under Paul Hurst: the fact that both parties want to get back together is a good sign. We can't go on much but looks, and I like the look of Payne: a man who knows what he's about, and won't tolerate nonsense, from opposing defenders, from team-mates or from twitter trolls. He is available for tonight's game but coming back from a long-term injury, so may need some time to get back to his best.

But we have lost a goalscorer, and one of our greats, and the good that players do does live on, not just in the memories of those who saw them but in how those memories are handed down through the generations. Ron Rafferty, whose death was reported yesterday, is one of those players every Town fan has heard of, although his feats were performed before most of us were born. A great finisher, with either foot or with his head, and well served by two fine wingers in Johnny Scott and Jimmy Fell, he evokes an era. Although he often played as an inside left or right, he has gone down in legend as a centre forward. On the official site, Kirky has written a wonderful tribute to him and I hope that if you saw Rafferty play, you will write in with your memories of the player. In the meantime, our condolences to family and friends who are mourning the man.