Cod Almighty | Diary
Don't get me started, Matt
28 September 2023
News!! Only kidding — it’s Thursday! Settle down. There’s no news round here, not unless you like calendars. Town’s 2024 effort has gone on sale today, and some players are down at the Blundell Park club shop signing them from 3.30pm. If you like that kind of thing, get yourself down there!
Your West Yorkshire Diary wonders how much thought goes into who should adorn the calendar’s pages. It’s fraught with issues and must be an editorial nightmare. Harry Clifton could get poached in January if the price is right, and we’ll be lucky to get a full season out of Kamil Conteh if he continues to impress. The vultures circle in the new year. We also need at least seven players from our current first team squad to remain here beyond May.
And then Paul Hurst (or Small Burst, as Mrs West Yorkshire Diary affectionately calls him) may sign some new players in January. We might even get that magical and increasingly mythical creature known as ‘the target man’ in January, but he won’t make the cut and his grinning face will have to wait until 2025 before it can grace the kitchens and bedroom walls of Town supporters across the land.
I found myself nodding along in agreement with Daubney Diary yesterday, in that far too much value is heaped upon a goal that was preceded by a few dozen uninterrupted passes. I’m not saying we should eradicate elegant, free-flowing keep-ball from the sport, but I see far greater beauty in brutal incision — you know, like the way we ripped Huddersfield apart with four or five razor-sharp passes before Cockerill slammed it home. It raised the roof in a way that boring a defence to death with dozens of tip-tapping sideways passing never will. That Buckley goal was dripping with skill, wit, speed, craft and intelligence.
Town scored a pretty passing pre-pandemic goal at Colchester on a cold Tuesday night. As Pep-perfect as it was at the time, there’s only one goal we all remember from that night — Charles Vernam’s incisive, slinky jinky 80-yard run and 20-yard finish to complete his hat-trick. Fans love to see players driving at the defence, taking on defenders, forcing them to commit, lunge, foul, anything. There aren’t enough heth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth, heth-eth-eth-eth-eth-eth Chris Waddles about any more, that's the problem.
“It doesn’t matter how they go in,” screams the commentator, when a luckless, out-of-form striker scores with his backside in the final minute of an impassioned derby that triggers a mini pitch invasion. It’s a phrase the striker will echo in his post-match interview. Lovely stuff. I just can’t get that passionate about a 30-pass move, when only the final three or four truly unpick the lock. It shouldn’t be football’s utopia. Neither should scoring with your arse, by the way. Utopia is Cockerill's goal, basically. That's what I'm saying.
Keepers feinting and dummying to wriggle past onrushing strikers — what’s that all about? Commentators who praise them for their skill are part of the problem. The keepers might succeed more often than they fail at this, but I’ve yet to see one keeper do it while looking totally in control. It’s not beautiful; it’s insane. Hoof it clear, for god’s sake.
Stuttering run-ups at penalties? Stop being a dick. Just smash it. Oh, now you’re dinking it down the middle. Well done. What do you want, a biscuit? And with football data now raising its smug, smirking know-it-all head above the parapet, I’m going to stop there because I haven’t got the time to soliloquise on the emotional investment it provokes among the modern febrile fanbase, desperate to find another reason to cry about why they deserved to win, but didn't.
The problem with being 17th in the fourth division is that the next team you’re due to play is probably above you in the league, which likely adjusts your plans and mentality going into the game. That’s why a good start to the season is so important — then you’re going into every match looking down on your opponent. Swindon are looking down on us, undefeated, and as the division’s top scorers.
I don’t anticipate us getting much from our trip to Wiltshire at the weekend. Had we held out at Bradford, and not gone all kamikaze against Crawley, we might be approaching this one in a more positive frame of mind. Town have had a terrible habit of dropping points after scoring first this season. Conceding first hasn’t worked out well for us, either.
It’s time for the Mariners to put in one of those quirky performances that comes out of nowhere. Remember when we went to table-topping Exeter just after getting slammed at Chelsea in the cup a few days earlier, and won 3-1 with a few kids sprinkled among the starting XI? I’m thinking that kind of thing.
UTM!