Cod Almighty | Diary

It's the final meltdown

29 July 2024

Miss Guest Diary writes: I confess I initially felt that £45 for the basic subscription to Mariners TV was a bit pricey this season, especially as I never listen to the match commentaries. I do appreciate the extended highlights of games, though I rarely bother to watch the ones where Town lose, which ruled out quite a bit of content last season. But what I most like to see are the interviews and behind the scenes footage.

I absolutely loved the film posted last week – which may have already justified the £45 outlay – where the players and staff were having a boxing lesson followed by footage of them playing a series of indoor games: darts, pool and something which looked like miniature curling. To see the players, manager and coaches simply having fun as a group away from the serious business of training and playing football was a delight. If the camaraderie and spirit shown there carries through into the season, I have no fears for Town's prospects, whether or not those extra players which the keyboard warriors of social media insist we need ever materialise.

For the rest, I'm metaphorically sticking my fingers in my ears and singing "la la la" so I don't have to listen to all the negative nellies coming out with nonsense about Town being thrashed every week and laying odds on relegation. As one denizen of CA Towers so eloquently put it at the weekend: they all need to go and get some other fucking hobbies.

Regular readers will know that my summertime hobby is following Nottinghamshire cricket. They're having a middling time in the County Championship this year, having won one, drawn six and lost two so far. Regrettably, their white ball team the Notts Outlaws failed dismally in the T20 competition, coming bottom of the table after winning only three games out of 14 – and I only managed to see one of those victories. But the Outlaws' fortunes may be on the turn, having won two out of three games in the 50-over competition during the last week.

England beating the West Indies 3-0 in the recent Test series was also pretty good. My introduction to Test cricket came almost exactly 40 years ago in August 1984 when I queued up for tickets at the Oval to see the likes of Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards, Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall wrap up their 5-0 whitewash of England. The ease with which the current England team won this series is testament to how the wheel of fortune can turn.

And then there's the Olympics. You tell yourself you're not really interested and then you read about the bizarre events at the Argentina vs Morocco football match before the games had even opened; see thousands of people standing for four hours in the rain to see a laser light show and some old geezers running very slowly with a torch; and then find yourself watching canoeing with your afternoon tea and badminton over breakfast.

Sport – where would we be without it, eh?