Cod Almighty | Article
by Various
11 January 2025
The latest of our back-capturing, space-filling exercise in recycling stuff is here in mid-winter to warm you up with big memories of big games against Big Sheffield Wednesday a long time ago when we was fab.
A history of forgettable football from a past we'd both like to forget
Hello Wednesday, our old friends, you've come to play with us again. Long time, no see, it's been 20 long years since we were peers. For you now we're just somewhere you might come to play a pre-season friendly.
We used to be contenders, well, contending with you for relegation and disappointment with a revolving side door of mutual failure and past players as we chased each other out of what we're now supposed to call 'The Championship'.
We see Adam Proudlock and Micheal Reddy popping up for Wednesday, though not popping up to score, with Terry Cooke and Tony Crane appearing for both in a series of dreadful encounters between two clubs on an historic down cycle. Our match reports are a tale of woe and woefulness from two teams in the bad times playing bad football, sometimes with bad hair.
But Hillsborough is the birth place of a fondly-remembered former Cod Almighty feature: Stu's half-time toilet talk. After a chance encounter with France-based Town fan Stu Morton on 1 January 2001 a monster was created, and here's the original:
I should really let him do it himself as he was in the ground and, presumably, was in the toilets at some stage. "Isn't that Alan Pouton over there?" Yes the mystery of the disappearing King of the Stepover was partly solved when he was seen munching a pie in the tea bar under the Leppings Lane end. He was in with the supporters, rather than in the players bar. Now what does that say?
And this evolved into simple reportage of arbitrary things overheard at matches.
Ah, those games our people played. Let's look at 2002/3 where, during an end-of-season, season ending, 0-0 our match reporter consoled us with the thought "Relax - if we're drowning, then like a spurned lover we're taking them with us." In a game so dire he was practically pleading for mercy:
"You can go and make a cup of tea now, make a sandwich too. Put some pickle in it. Go and buy some if you haven't any; there's plenty of time...time, ticking away the moments that made up a dull game. Two teams walking towards Colchester in their own offhand ways.
There were two minutes of added time, which passed away peacefully in our sleep, which is a fitting epitaph for these two teams' seasons. In the context of this match, Town were more than adequate. In the context of the predicament, though, it was not quite enough. Maybe that should be the epitaph for Town."
There was always some toilet talk to cheer us up:
"Santos is a real brick at the back. That's not what the Wednesday fans are saying”.
"That's two motorcycle combinations in two weeks. What are the odds on that?"
And the next season, things could only get better? Errr…another dreary goalless draw at Hillsborough where the only spark of entertainment was the ref getting a smack in the chops:
"The referee collapsed and received a big cold wet sponge rub-around, like mothers do when clearing the chocolate spread from around their nipper's lips.… Minds drifted as time passed; amusement was found in strange and unusual ways. It took 17 policeman to eject one irate Wednesdayite, and when his mate complained, he went too. Ah, that was just an excuse to leave early and beat the traffic.
What else happened? Wait, wait, I'm computing the data. Sensors indicate that planet football is a barren landscape. All life forms were terminated by a catastrophic event, known to the inhabitants as half time."
It's time for a toilet break:
"She'd rather sleep in Morrisons car park than come to Hillsborough."
"Proudlock is a utility player - he can clean ovens and boots."
"Crane's the only Town player who'd get in the Wednesday team."
Our last competitive meeting, in April 2003, was a pyrrhic victory of no historic importance, where Wednesday imploded with a double-barrel comedy own goal from Barry-Murphy and double or quits nuttiness from Ndumbu-Nsungu.
"Perhaps he was bored, perhaps he's a secret lemonade drinker? Who knows why he, like a slightly tipsy uncle trying to take away the tablecloth with your mother's finest china tea set sitting proudly atop, decided to vent his fury on Jevons' ankles. Not content with sticking at yellow he twisted and went for pontoon as into Crowe's face went a hand and out of the referee's back pocket came a red card.”
What more can we say?
"What use is a horse without a cart?" "Are you talking about Warhurst again?"
And finally our original Diarist, ever droll, really summed up our Schadenfreude with Wednesday after a 2003 defeat in the most minor of competitions:
"Paul Groves pulled off a tactical masterstroke in the second division promotion race at Hillsborough last night by forcing Sheffield Wednesday to remain in the LDV Vans Trophy. Owls boss Chris Turner had made clear his resentment at having to enter the competition for small clubs, calling it a distraction from the real business of taking his club back to its rightful place in the higher echelons of the league; and the Town manager shrewdly realised that losing to Wednesday in the Trophy would help his side steal a march on them in the chase for the Division Two top spots. Hence the Mariners allowing their sloppy seconds, also known as Adam Proudlock, a 72nd-minute goal to cancel out an early blunder by Darren Mansaram in which the lively but naive young striker carelessly fired home left-footed from the edge of the Wednesday area. After half an hour of goalless extra time sapped the home side's league energy still further, a missed penalty by Stuart Campbell brilliantly condemned the Owls to at least another season of second division football.”
And in the end we went down that year. That'll learn 'em! Who's laughing now, eh?
Bring on the empty horses.
These are the full versions of the Cod Almighty programme articles for the 2024/25 season. An edited version was published on 27 August 2024