Cod Almighty | Diary

We are sailing

31 July 2023

Miss Guest Diary writes: I fear I may owe my fellow Town fans an apology. Regular readers will know that Mr Butcher and I sponsored a few players shirts back in the early 2000s but gave up because we felt we were jinxing their careers. You will also know that, on a whim, we offered to sponsor Toby Mullarkey's shirt this season. Well, the arrival of our payment at Blundell Park will have more or less coincided with Mullarkey getting injured in the pre-season game against Lincoln. Hopefully, he is one of the players who, according to his post-match interview on Saturday, Paul Hurst said "could come back into training" during this week. If not, then I sincerely apologise.

The phoney war of pre-season is over and Hurst has declared himself to be "very pleased" with performances. Despite losing 1-0 at Fleetwood, he felt that Town controlled the game, but acknowledged that some players need to have a more ruthless streak to put the ball in the net. In direct contradiction of those fans who are convinced that Town must have a 20-goal-a-season striker, Hurst is happy for goals to come from any position.

I was mightily impressed with Town's performance against Lincoln last week – if we can have that starting line up against Wimbledon on Saturday then I feel optimistic about Town's chances. As this is one of only two pre-Christmas matches where home fans won't be able to buy tickets behind the goal in the Osmond end, I assume that Wimbledon will be bringing quite a few fans. We can probably also look forward to some antics from Harry Pell to wind up the home crowd, so it should be a really good atmosphere.

The now usual scramble for away tickets has started, with those for the cup game at Mansfield and the league game at Notts County both going on sale at the same time. The quandary was which to try for first – solved by logging into my ticket account on two separate devices and going for both at the same time. Surprisingly it worked, helped I suspect by there being no queue for the Mansfield tickets. Whatever, I now have two awaydays to look forward to, both nearer to my house than Blundell Park.

Taking place as I type is the Community Open Day at Blundell Park where there will be opportunities to meet the squad and see the annual squad photo being taken. Lots of other activities will also be taking place, with the Trust bar open throughout for refreshments. It goes on till 2pm, so if you're local there's still time to get down there and join in the fun.

Alternatively, if you're not local or if you are simply in a more philosophical frame of mind, have a read of Chairman Wow's latest Guardian piece in which he muses on the changing identities of football clubs by invoking Theseus's Paradox, more familiarly known these days as Trigger's Broom. Or maybe, in the future, Blundell Park.

Before I go, I make no apologies for digressing from Town-related content to mention the retirement of cricketer Stuart Broad. I'm going to miss him turning up at Trent Bridge for early season county championship games to trundle a few overs while working on his fitness for England.

UTM