Cod Almighty | Diary
Lesson one: never trust a bastard Tory
23 April 2021
Daubney Diary has been optimistic about our chances of avoiding relegation and is defiantly clinging to faint hopes. As an engineer, I believe in the numbers: four times three is twelve. Have you heard the one about the engineer and the glass? An optimist says the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be. Boom, now we've started.
Four wins keeps us up but since Tuesday's loss it's been difficult not to reach for the seatback holder and have a quick re-read of the emergency landing instructions. Rover has us in its sights and it looks like we'll be back in the village with nowt to show for it but a set of decapitated floodlights and several more chapters of the growing tome, Never Trust a Bastard Tory.
Actually, there was a Twitter thing last week where lasses on the, err, coupling/dating app Tinder were getting grief for putting "No Tories" on their bio. Don't mix politics with sex was the cry, from Tory blokes probably. The bio request seems reasonable to me and I only wish we'd had a similar sign in the Blundell Park window when TopCon John came a-knocking. The moral is you can mix politics with football and sex and whatever else you want; just don't mix Tories with anything.
If we are going back to the conference, the emergency instructions state that it is important to show that we've learnt a few lessons. New ownership will no doubt help but what else can we fans do or expect?
For a start, no moaning about the FA Trophy unless it is that we're not trying hard enough to win it. When you visit somewhere, it's good manners to bring back a souvenir, a mug or a cup with the resort's name in it. I've known this since a telling off when I came back from Skegness empty-handed. Protests that I'd only gone there to pick up a two-seater couch I'd bought on the free ads fell on deaf ears. Skeggy is Skeggy, apparently. That defeat to Halifax still rankles as well.
If anyone complains about too many Trophy games or having to watch us at the Dog and Duck in the preliminary round of the Cup, they're getting a kick up the hole and getting sent to the nearest Covid colony.
Have respect for teams with 10 fans huddled in the Osmond and be nice. They obviously want to be here even less than we do.
Don't get all excited and shit the bed in Sheffield if we play Alfreton. If you go to Wealdstone or wherever, don't expect to rock up at 2.59pm clutching a Tuborg and complaining the tinpot club wasn't ready for you as you and several hundred peers try to find the right change for the single turnstile attendant.
New grounds! Up at 6 o'clock and off to King's Lynn. I know nothing about the town or the club but I bet it beats the hell out of Crawley. These grounds will have terraces. It's the only way to watch football. So much so that if we can't have them in our new ground, I wouldn't bother with one at all.
Stockport! So good to see you again. If we can finish below them, we will wrestle back the mantle of 'Fallen Farthest Since ITV Digital Went Ka-blam-o'. We are then legally entitled to have it tattoed on Fenty's botoxed face.
Covid! If there's a second wave, they'll probably abandon the conference. No poxy iFollow football for us, we can just sit back and laugh at whoever appoints Toss-hatted Wankbadger.
No more embarrassing outings in the b-team trophy, trying to win bonus points for having silly moustaches or whatever. This is especially important if Lincoln keep
getting promoted. Bad enough that they'll soon be doing a Hull and sending us their academy surplus for a run out, we don't need to be playing their b-team in the Shame of Lincolnshire derby.
If some racist says some racist stuff, this time ban them for life.
No crappy betting logos and the club Twitter account telling us who's a good bet for the first goal. I'll take advice on a surprisingly good rate on a van lease any day of the week.
Extra play-off places! I can't even remember the details but I know they've enhanced the system to improve our chances of disappointment.
A return to non-League doesn't devalue what has gone before. I've convinced myself of this in trying to downplay the whole thing to two teenage sons who list their two favourite games as Wembley 2016 and Notts County 2018. Those days and the emotions can't be changed or taken away. It works both ways, was the pain of Burton lessened by Wembley? Not for me. The eventual relegations that followed 1998, 1990-91 and 1980-81 couldn't erase the glory that went before. Impossible. Those moments of joy are ours unless it emerges George Kerr was pumping his team full of steroids. Impossible. Records show that the success was built on skill, hard graft, pints of Hewitts and 20 John Player Blue.
We will probably play 3-4-3 for the first few months. That's three wins, four draws, three defeats. This will somewhow leave us about 45 points adrift of top spot. The key here will be to clutch your towel and not panic. Panic leads to 120 players. We'd love to come straight back up. With teams like Wrexham, Notts, Chesterfield, Hartlepool and others potentially knocking about there's a good chance that won't happen. Have a look at this from 1994. My hook is the quote "The new style of fan will see losing as a sign of failure." We know that sometimes you do everything right and still lose. No one is an oxygen thief. Or needs to be made to walk home from a Tuesday night draw in Carlisle. Well occasionally, people should be made walk home.
That shifts us to the last lesson to learn: we're a yo-yo club. Take the 2009 points deductions out and relegation would be our third in twelve years. With a DVD-inspiring great escape thrown in. "Success, if it's going to come at all, comes quickly. The long term plan was Michael's idea" quote is above all the other John Fenty embarassments because it is the source or creator of those embarassments.
To break free of the legacy, things will need to be different. Norwich are a club we could do worse than look at. They got fed up with their own yo-yoing and have used the book the Infinite Game to inform their operations. This was Stuart Webber, their director of football after relegation last July:
"...The work that we've done, the benefits will come long after the likes of myself have gone. That's important, football’s an infinite game, it doesn't end. I truly believe my role is to help make this club better in the future and some of them benefits will be long after I've gone but that's my job.
"If it was about me or Daniel, then we wouldn't build a training ground and we would spend money just on players, we would leave to go to other clubs on a personal level just to earn a bit money and have a bit more kudos. The owners have entrusted us and we’ve got to pay them back and help them build something which then someone better than me or Daniel can come in in the future and make it even better. This club deserves the best it can be."
If that doesn't float your boat, how about this from February:
"Football's an infinite game, so when people say, 'Why are you spending £2m on a gym? Spend it on a striker, you have more chance of winning next week.' Well, yeah, you probably have. But this team will be forever. [Facilities will] train more strikers than £2m can buy you. In 15 years, you will look back and think, 'We brought 30 players through here.'"
Read the full piece here and you'll see it's not surprising to see them run away with the Championship. Finally, before I go off and buy my yellow and green hat, here's how to recruit players.
Oldham tomorrow. Sod me, just looked at the table again. Four wins will do it if Scunny don't win another game. I've checked in with a few and they don't think they will win another game. They can't even take pleasure in our position, they've got their own owner issues. Fenty or Swann, eh? What a choice, the evil of two lessers.