Cod Almighty | Diary
The fickle finger of fate
27 September 2024
Your A46 Diary enjoyed the film Starve Acre this week. It's a tense and at times genuinely horrifying experience that captures the desperate grief of parents who have lost their only son and in their despair turn to the occult, finding answers in macabre tales of Dandelion Jack who can offer those who have suffered second chances, but only if they have sacrificed something they have truly loved. It's not, therefore, a choice for these parents, just whether or not they can take the chance offered.
The occult and its subsidiaries of hexes, bogies, superstitions and lucky charms is threaded throughout football (anything that takes your spiritual fancy, from a druid at Leyton orient, a pagan goddess at Southampton, an exorcism at Oxford, to Paul Hurst's lucky boxers) and so while the film made its well-paced way to a bloody climax, I couldn't help but wonder about how this might be applied to Town's recent fortunes. The word cursed is thrown around a lot at times like these: first it was Thompson, then Davies and now Vernam, all succumbing to the 'hammy', packed off for the dreaded scan, then declared unfit for months. Add the peripheral players' woes (where is Pyke?), the inexperience of our most promising and another game against opponents with new owners, a ton of cash, a need for a win and a new manager's first home game and we seem to be caught in a perfect storm of supernatural energies that toss and tear at us with evil abandon. It's starting to feel like we could do with a spiritual Justice League down at Blundell Park, shaking their things, dusting their dust and canting their cants.
A favourite game of football fans is a few rounds of the good old 'would you rather?/would you give?' My eldest is in Manchester now, surrounded by students from all over the country and few of them are football fans, fewer still the dedicated lower-league follower that so confuses the teletext-watchers of yesteryear and the goal notification pocket-buzzers of today. Just what is it about a club like Grimsby that can make anyone so obsessed, they want to know. Would you rather fail your course or see Grimsby relegated again? Fail my course, he dutifully responds (I've never been so proud!). You can't be serious. That's nonsense. Don't be ridiculous. He just smiles, knowing they'll never understand, not fully, even though they were there in the away end at Salford last year and came out singing about Danny Rose and telling anyone who would listen – with absolute conviction - that Mullarkey was Messi reborn.
But for them, the thrill was temporary, not part of their souls, not something to sacrifice to Dandelion Jack. And what we might sacrifice for Town. Take our current situation, how many would wish for an offer from Dandelion Jack? Who'd swap some personal benefit or gain for six more points? Giving up a holiday, perhaps, or allowing the fates to deny fortune in a weekend or two's bets? Who'd make promises of moral behaviour to accelerate Barrington's and Gardner's maturation? Who'd take swapping our nine points for a fully fit squad? Most would say no, but a few, the most dejected, the most desperate, the most thrill-seeking, would snap that creepy guy's hand off.
I would give up custard for a month to just reverse that second yellow on Keiran Bellingham!
As my eldest told me his story about baffled non-footballers, he asked if I'd give a finger to see Town in the Championship. No, I said. Premier League? I shrugged, don’t think so. Champions League? Well, it's only a finger, and it's not as if that's a chance that will ever be offered. Right?