Cod Almighty | Diary

Somewhere over the rainbow

1 March 2021

Miss Guest Diary writes: One of my favourite fictional heroes is Jack Reacher and he has a motto: hope for the best; plan for the worst. I think Paul Hurst took a leaf out of Jack's book for his match tactics against Harrogate on Saturday which almost, but didn’t quite, pay off with a point. By all accounts the resulting performance was dire and terrible to watch, despite Hurst's upbeat talk of narrow margins and the game panning out much as he had expected.

I say by all accounts because I didn't watch any of the game. It quite often happens when I am watching sport on TV that the team or person I am rooting for will score a goal or take a wicket or do something equally momentous the minute I leave the room. So when Crawley equalised on Tuesday night I was banished upstairs to see if it would change Town's luck – and of course it did. The natural consequence was that I was banned from watching Town playing on Saturday. That makes it sound as if I am the helpless victim of an overbearing partner when, in truth, I was happy to have an excuse to avoid something which I find incredibly stressful.

Fortunately, some of the teams around us at the bottom of the table also lost so Town are still well in the fight. And, as Mardy Diary always claims, the season doesn't really start till March anyway. Tomorrow Town "go again", as footballers on social media like to say, against Leyton Orient, who have just sacked their manager. Is this an omen? Has the Grimsby Reaper struck in advance?

I absolutely hate it when pundits and commentators imply that the performances of teams who were managed by someone else and made up of completely different players have some bearing on a current game. You know, things like "Everton haven't won at Anfield this century" – and then they do. Or from last night's Match of the Day: Liverpool haven't lost five games in a row since – I'm afraid I tuned out here – it might have been 1852. Of course, Liverpool didn't lose: so, once again, it was a perfectly useless statistic which proved nothing.

In that vein I was exasperated to see someone on Twitter had been looking at the fourth division tables from the past ten years to see how many teams who were in the relegation places at this stage of the season did actually go down. The answer is about 50 per cent. I am not sure whether this is supposed to fill us with hope or despair, but I do know it can have absolutely no effect on the outcome for Town this season.

So here's something to boggle your mind. Last week I mentioned the interview on Radio Humberside with Gary Lund. He talked about Lincoln being relegated in the season he played for them after leaving Town. What he didn't mention, but which I am reliably informed is true, is that at no point in that year were Lincoln in the relegation spot until the final whistle blew in the final game of the season. Go figure!