Cod Almighty | Diary

Happy clapper? I'll take that

10 August 2022

"Can we just appreciate this counter attack from last night?" tweeted Town. Can we just appreciate a four-nil win on a Tuesday night and being in the pot for tonight's draw? Whilst the crowd had dropped and many will have to think long and hard about whether they can afford more games, it's always uplifting to get a decent cup result, and even better a cup run. We're Town fans, we live in hope.

Let's just pause a minute and appreciate this team who are coming together. It was great to keep most of last season's first team and the newbies seem to be fitting in very nicely. There were a couple of occasions on Saturday when it was clear they will need to get used to playing together: a ball into an attacking area but nobody following up, a mistimed pass or two. It was very clear that our culture of battling to the final whistle has been taken on board. You can imagine managers of other teams using our play-off games as examples of just how important it is to never give up. It's not empty words. Our fitness levels are impressive too. It takes time to settle down and understand each other in any new job. Hursty seems to have these on fast-forward and it's looking good.

You can probably tell I'm not in that group who were grumbling about Hurst and a couple of players on Saturday and even the odd one moaning again yesterday evening. I've mentioned these fans here before. I just content myself with thinking what unhappy people they must be in their lives where football is the only arena in which they feel big enough to express an opinion out loud. Sad really and probably best ignored.

We will need to double-check which shirt was sported on Tuesday. Let's hope it can stand a good few washes. It's funny how sensible people who aren't usually superstitious have a range of things that they have to 'do' on matchdays. I changed turnstile after our poor run last season and now the only thing in the world that could persuade me to change again would be an extremely poor run. Do I actually believe it makes a difference? No, I really don't, but these things just become part of the matchday ritual. Where you eat and drink beforehand, where you park, although the bigger crowds have scuppered that. It's all a fundamental part of gameday. Long may it continue.

UTM!

PS Forest in the draw would be very nice, thanks.