Cod Almighty | Diary

Strange Days

5 September 2022

Miss Guest Diary writes: Newport, Newport, it's a helluva long way to go for a football match, which is one of the reasons I stayed home on Saturday.

I wasn't deterred from going by all the gloom-mongers on social media last week eager to tell everyone that Town had never won, nor even scored a goal, at Rodney Parade. So what? I have never understood why citing past results is seen to be a predictor for the outcome of a game. It's one of the things I find most annoying about commentators on TV. Why should something a completely different set of players for your team did against a completely different set of players for the opposition have any bearing on how the current team perform?

No, even before the season started I had crossed off Rodney Parade from the list of grounds I'd be visiting. I was there in 2013 for the play-off semi and I'm still slightly traumatised. The dire quality of the football was only a part of it. From my memory, this was the first outing of the "We're gonna bounce in a minute" chant. I don't expect your average football fan to be familiar with the concept of mechanical resonance, but I was more than a little alarmed at all the bouncing up and down on the temporary seating structure behind the goal. To cap it all the stadium announcer had the bad manners to start advertising the sale of "Wembley t-shirts" before we’d even left the ground. Tinpot.

My only other visit to Newport was with my soon-to-be, now long ex-husband during a visit to his family in Cardiff back in the summer of 1976. Before I was hooked by Town, I watched all sorts of other sports and that visit was to a speedway meeting which, when I mentioned it to Mr B at the weekend, he informed me would have been at Newport County's previous home of Somerton Park. Apparently, I've been to Wimbledon's old ground too, in fact I regularly watched speedway at Plough Lane in the 70s. Who knew? Certainly not me as I didn't go to my first football match until nearly 15 years later.

My only regret about not going on Saturday was that I missed another goal from my favourite, Harry Clifton. It's been noticeable for months that he often gets himself into goalscoring positions but fails to score. Now he's found the knack of getting the ball in the net, I hope I'll get plenty more chances to celebrate a Harry goal this season. The return of Alex Hunt means Hurst can choose from eight senior players to fill four, or maybe sometimes three, midfield slots. I was worried this might mean no place for Harry in the starting line-up, so his goals couldn't have been better timed. He's currently top scorer too.

Harry's goal on Saturday wasn't enough to get him into The Football League Paper team of the day, but Bryn Morris and Anthony Glennon did make it. I don't believe the people who select these teams actually watch the games, they probably just spot something obvious in the televised highlights, so I'm betting it was their cheeky little free kick routine which did the trick.

What strange days these are. I've suddenly got an urge to go to Colchester.

UTM