Cod Almighty | Diary

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

16 December 2022

BOTB here, discussing the two big games of the weekend. In Qatar, two referee-assisted teams will play out a farcical World Cup Final, but the big 'un is of course Mansfield vs Grimsby (weather permitting).

So, what can we say about the Field they are all calling Mans? They are currently in a play-off spot. Well done them. We seem to follow Mansfield around a lot, don't we? Indeed we have played them more than any other team in our existence (please note: I've not done any research and this might be rubbish). Of the games we have played, we have won quite a few, some have been draws, and others have resulted in victory for Mansfield.

After the balm of last week's victory against a Tranmere gang best described as "pants", we find ourselves 13 points away from the tinpot trapdoor, which is most relaxing, thank you. GTFC manager, plucky little Paul Hurst decided to bring on an extra defender when we were one goal up but, in a tactical masterstroke, he brought him on too late to earn Tranmere a draw. If I knew how to insert a gif here I'd put in the one of that chap who looks a bit like Eddie Murphy tapping his head and looking smart.

Going back to the less important fixture for a second, Paris St Germain (owned by Qatar Sports Investments) teammates Mbappe and Messi will go head to head in the battle of the teams who the Qataris desperately wanted in the final. Thank goodness Morocco didn't get through, eh? Never mind, though. There is a good chance chance of England winning the Fifa Fair Play Award, the world's most oxymoronic trophy.

When it comes to football I have always noted a discrepancy between the way the posh papers cover the sport and the way the tabloids do. Now I despise the tabloids as much as any right-thinking man, but when it comes to sport they usually catch the mood of the nation. Football is emotional, moving, visceral in its impact. The dry prose of the broadsheets spectacularly fails to capture this. In addition, the middleclass papers often fail to mention the bleedin' obvious, keeping a wry and amused detachment from the concerns of the average fan.

Even if, say, corruption or an incompetent referee are obvious, you won't find any mention of it in the broadsheets. Criticising anybody who isn't English is a form of xenophobia, runs the broadsheet orthodoxy. Michael Owen might have dived on one occasion in 1998 so we can hardly speak about other teams' misdemeanours. If you say what happened on the pitch when Holland played Argentina was not so much a World Cup tie as an International Arseholes Convention you may as well vote Brexit and have a picture of Nigel Farage on your bedroom ceiling. The wretched common people are so paranoid, so emotional, so one-eyed. Not like us. The posh football journalists. We aren’t one-eyed. We are wilfully blind.

Have you finished with the head shaking and the tut-tutting? Then I'll go on. Are you going to the Field of Men tomorrow (weather permitting?). I wouldn't recommend going the Ollerton way, because it involves going through Ollerton. Good luck as usual to our travelling hordes and I look forward to you brightening up many a dreary December living room as John Tondeur’s backing band.

Well, there's the diary. The only one that dares to have a bash at the real enemy, broadsheet football journalists. Yeah? Do you want some? Don't mess with me.