Cod Almighty | Diary

Oh my word, he's scored

10 December 2024

Instead of You are the Ref, today we are going to play "You are the spectator".

The player you have been slagging off scores a brilliant and important goal. Do you:

A. Celebrate but grumble that your elderly relative (or you, if you are an elderly relative) could have hit that in with a walking stick. That's a line from Yesterday's Hero, an implausible film from 1979 starring Ian McShane as a footballer with a drink problem. He is persuaded by the pop-star owner of a third-flight club to make a comeback, and scores in the semi-final of the FA Cup. 

B. Join the celebrations, happily accepting the chaffing from those around you. That was the bloke sat behind me when Adrian Forbes scored against Accrington some 20 years ago, laughing at himself as someone remarked "You'd just been saying how well he was playing."

C. Immediately revise your opinion and proclaim to the end of your days what a great player he is. By my father's account, that was Newbegin Diary's grandfather on Tommy Briggs, our record scorer from the late 1940s.

D. Remain seated, having to consider whether you'd prefer Town to be relegated rather than be proved wrong. That was, more or less, the response of a bigwig from the early days of messageboards, who considered it a personal dilemma when, after the sacking of Paul Groves, Graham Rodger was appointed caretaker manager. In the event, the club resolved the problem to his complete dissatisfaction: they replaced Rodger with Nicky Law and we got relegated under him instead.

Apart from D, they are all correct answers: it turns out that being a fan is easier than being a ref.

The scenario came to mind after Justin Obikwu's three goals against Accrington and Morecambe. I'm too timid to do much slagging off but I must admit that until last week he had struck me as typical of loan players from bigger clubs: some budding ability but too callow to be effective.

Obikwu has set me right, for perhaps no other player on our books would have shown such a precise touch to open the scoring at Morecambe, certainly not me with my imaginary walking stick. He'll no doubt be back with Coventry next season, so he'll never be to me what Tommy Briggs was to my grandfather, but you are welcome to spend the rest of today ribbing me about my poor judgement.