Cod Almighty | Diary

What Just Happened?!

3 October 2022

I didn't go, Burnsie, but Town weren't rubbish in the end.

Hello, hello, hello, it's Monday and your diary is more deviant than you expected today, though possibly less devious or mischievous. Hey, it's not a crime to rhyme when you're wasting time.

Blimey, eh, 1,300 travelling Townites and Big John McAtee bobbed along to the sound of Salford's suburbs where old men were out washing their cars and mums were in the kitchen cooking dinner. Depressed by the surroundings, distressed by the formation, the twitterati tutted and muttered about being in a tin-tack tin shed where the tannoy's bass was too loud and no-one could hear the words.

Yoiks, a back three-ish! Hurst deployed Messrs Heath and Robinson in a patched-up, made-up back three as the best laid plans of nice Marinermen gang aft a-gley. It's a ball of confusion, that's what it was, as players dropped like nine pins before the Mariners motorcade hit Manchester. There's no suggestion that anyone stripey followed the lead of Crewe's top scorer and dropped their leg on their sofa though.

Well Scott Neilson dropped his aitches, Linwood and Conlon dropped their pints, Jamie Mack frequently dropped the ball, and many a manager failed to drop the dead donkeys at centre-forward, but no-one at Town has ever "…just dropped his leg on the sofa and tweaked it."

At least Efete's absence is only down to being hamstrung. Hamstrung by what? His own id?

I could go on, but as I didn't go, how would I know? There's a thoroughly sensible and totally straight substitute match report that tells you things in plain English, Steve.

Neil Wood, Salford's present pre-sacked manager, complained about giving Town too much respect and was amazed by the big support, failing to notice that Legoland was packed with day trippers. Their fans were miffed that Town shut up shop to halt that no-match losing streak we're on away from home. They really aren't to be taken seriously, are they, these nouveau riche arrivistes playing at being a football club.

What's coming up this week? Heavens to Betsy, Kev, there's another plaything for the rich and infamous coming our way! Yes it's the Creepy Crawley game tomorrow night, of course, live and exclusive on the DN35 podcast, Britain's leading uncanny recreation of three men wittering in The Wheatsheaf about things they vaguely misremember. It's a virtual pub for the exiles, harmless enough if you leave them alone with their thoughts. The rest of us will just have to wait for the re-run at Blundell Park on Saturday.

Ah, but will the Grimsby Reaper have already struck? Poor Kev, he seems such a nice young man but he should know by now that, in football, the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Stand by for a less than cryptic message from the cryptokings of Crawley.

And finally, there's a lovely little homily to our (re-adopted) home town hero, Mr Shaun Pearson, who is officially Man of the Year for being an all round good egg. Unless we're keeping some mutant chickens – that would be an all oval good egg, wouldn't it? Wasn't it George Kerr who first revealed that if you drink an egg nog at midnight when Town are equidistant from the top and bottom of the league, you can stand an egg on its end?

News! Fear not, our golden egg is safe, for the Millers have appointed a manager and it is Exeter whose fans have just turned a whiter shade of pale.

Onwards and upwards.