Cod Almighty | Diary

Because fact into doubt won't go

14 March 2024

The Mariners have drawn 1-1 eight times in the league this season, and in seven of them we scored first. We led… we drew. We led… we drew. It’d been déjà bloody vu, but a steely determination has been unearthed among a throng of defenders that’d previously looked incapable of standing upright unaided, which means scoring first is proving more valuable these days. Has the Cleethorpes tide turned?

We held out against the vegans; we stood firm against the franchise. One goal was all we needed — and it would’ve been just dandy last Sat’dee in Sutton, too, but for an errant assistant, an erroneous flag, and an all-expenses-paid trip to Ego Land.

Your West Yorkshire Diary was one of the discerning voices following the Donny debacle. Something needed to change. Artell’s position felt almost untenable, and what’s followed barely seems plausible.

We began 2024 by conceding a goal every 25 minutes, typically during football matches. Since defeat to Donny it’s been every 225 minutes. The defence has improved nine-fold, overnight. Now that’s data for you.

There’s no rhyme, just reason: a change in formation, a dressing room dressing down, and organisation. Discipline. None of that namby-pamby, airy-fairy, passing-it-out-from-the-back, freedom-of-speech malarkey, Toby. Just straight-up, no-nonsense football. Not John-Beck-keep-the-grass-longer-in-the-corners-and-feed-the-big-man-Cambridge shenanigans. We still pass. We still move. It’s just done with a bit more incision and intelligence.

The sun is now shining. The January signings are bearing fruit. All is well with the world, fourth bottom in the fourth division. Six points clear of Calamity Colchester. Managers say they don’t look at the league table, but they look at the data (or ‘metrics’, as Mike Williamson put it the other night). Come on, then, which is it?

Knowing you can count on your back four, five, or six as it is these days, gives strikers the confidence that their goals will make a difference. Knowing you can win without your captain and top scorer gives the whole team the confidence that the bigger plan is working.

We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re certainly not in incomprehensible debt with a shit pitch and zero ground staff, second bottom and in Joey Essex land. Imagine that. Sutton are toast. The Foresters are making a fist of it, and the Cowleys must be cowering, with their grassless canvas causing them most concern. They need some magic beans to get them out of this one, but nothing will grow on that sodden turf. Trust us — the BP pitch was as lifeless as the team that got us relegated from this division four years ago. We know.

Us? Well, it’s another long trek south, this time to Kent. For a team in tenth, competing for the play-offs, it seems utterly absurd that the Gills are the division’s lowest scorers. Their goal difference is appalling.

Only Bradford have a better defence on the road than us in the bottom half of the division. It has all the hallmarks of another nip-and-tuck game, where the scorers of the first goal may well prove to be the victors. Score first, you Mariners, and let’s give comedian Joe Wilkinson, wine person Oz Clarke and that Pop Idol bloke Rik Waller’s boys one hell of a beating!

UTM!