Cod Almighty | Diary

After the darkness, the clouds are lifting, this is our time

27 May 2021

Trentside Diary hasn't yet slumped into closed season malaise but it will surely strike soon. I'm hoping a decent "belated Euros" will provide an exciting interlude over the summer but to be honest I have probably just about had my fill of football on the telly for a while.

I was pottering about outside on Saturday when a strange, haunting sound drifted over. Dogs howled and it seemed to leave the darkness rather blacker than before. What was that? Miss Guest Diary at the cricket? No! A quick check of the time confirmed it was a that rarest of occurrences, a football crowd. More than 4000 real people in the ground cheering on their team, Notts County. I stood and listened for a moment. Jealous? You bet I was. Do I want them to go up? Sorry County fans but purely selfishly, they are just the best "awayday" for me so no, let's both go up together! Next season can't come quickly enough.

Information is trickling through and our second stint in the Bananarama League will kick off on 21 August and come to a glorious end on 21 May next year. Automatic promotion? It would be lovely but it's a tough league so I'll just enjoy having new owners and see how we get going. After the last 12 months I'll just be pleased to go and watch in person; anything else is a bonus. Remember that around Christmas when we are variously bemoaning our league position, bemoaning our tactics, bemoaning our lack of ambition. "Anything worth doing is worth doing well and that can take time" as an old boss used to say.

Talking of "taking time", the strong suggestions that Mattie Pollock and Ben Grist will be signed by Watford and Leicester City respectively is testament to Neil Woods and the academy setup that he's run on a shoe-string. Given the first team didn't train with round footballs, I imagine the shoestring was thinner than we suspected with knots holding it together. The money generated by selling on youngsters, sometimes after a season or two, in the first team is a model that works well for sustaining a degree of success for clubs. Investment in our youth facilities will pay off all round for the club and I hope it's the way to go. I'll certainly be having a look at the website to see if I can contribute in future. I don't mind paying money into the club now. I wonder why?

Finally, I just want to put here how much I'm enjoying/enduring the Fenty years with a masochistic pleasure. Mark Stilton needs a catchy strapline like one of those elite squads: "we do the dirty work so you don’t have to". Mr Trentside adopted the Mariners in 2011 and it's certainly added a level of detail my Fenty rants couldnt retain. It's very cathartic.

New era, new season! UTM!