Cod Almighty | Diary

A world of our own

31 May 2023

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed, everything else is public relations.

Streets full of people all alone, roads full of houses where no-one's home. Has everyone gone to the moon? Don't worry, the fixture list is out at the end of June. For your dedicated team of daily diarists this is the time when we stare into the abyss and the abyss simply stares back at us.

What's occurring? Eyes full of sorrow, never wet, hands full of money, all in debt. Ah yes, the promised land: the Poncier League.

As Aaron Maclean would say: Hey, look, listen, we need to talk about role models. No, not the Jack Lester type of perennial penalty seekers, but exemplars of excellence in the sporting field of corporate achievement. In the land of giants it's the turn of "Little Luton"™ to have a season in the sun, to spend every Saturday night being patronised by men with shiny shirts and shiny heads.

Last week the locally-labelled clickbaiting machine formally known as the Grimsby Telegraph was plodding on about Little Luton providing the template for success without spending "silly money". In this learned article there was no analysis, no numbers, just opinion based on an observation of the fact of someone else's success and a flaccid projection onto the 1878 Project.

Yes, Little Luton can show you the way! Of course they can, but only if you look at the facts and place them in context. Just because they did doesn't automatically mean we can. Context is king and planning is the patient prince waiting down the line in the UAE.

Little Luton, boy the stories I could tell about Little Luton, especially their collapse into administration. Ah, but I've signed the Official Secrets Act. Rules are rules. The law is the law. And Nicky Law was bloomin' awful, as we know.

Football has always been an unsquareable circle of debt that dances around one single issue – how do you find the funds to pay players the going rate for the division you are in? Maybe we'll get around to writing up an accounting analysis of comparative teams and the cash impact on you, yes you, the Town supporter. Yeah, maybe.

What else is there to talk about?

Hey, look, listen: we still need to talk about role models. No, not the Swiss sausage variety, but shining examples for the youth of today.

The dear old GT is letting their majestically high journalistic standards slip further. The poor old thing is left AI chatboxing a week-old SKY interview about Pakistan's trawling of England's lower leagues and academy system to shoehorn in a Town connection. Khan can.

And in constructing this thin gruel, the operative assigned to assemble content completely overlooked that fellow squad member Easah Suliman is a former Town loanee. Hey, look, listen, you got to get the basics right. Easah eased into Town at the end of the SludgeballI II era, making his debut at the Dawn of Jolleytime. Oh what a time to be alive! A team containing Ben Davies, Nathan Clarke, Danny Collins, Andrew Fox, James Berrett and Jamille Matt. And Harry Clifton. Just don't look at the subs bench after the street lights have come on, you'll have monochrome nightmares. Rich Lord knows they did, often.

Five years is a long time. Town have been reinvented and the GT has disintegrated. This is the organisation that was given a full dossier on the Fentycon's self-confessed tax avoidance problem and reported back that they "can't see what the story is". Hey, look, listen, but here's a picture taken in JDs, and another of the class of '81!

This is what they want.

Mind you, there's a picture of a young Deviant Diary dressed as Joseph somewhere in their vaults; I don't want that printed.

I have stared into the abyss of what is amiss in the rotting state of no-marks long enough. Enough is enough. And so to sleep…