Cod Almighty | Diary

Just breathe it in and hold

23 April 2014

Today is comparable to that weird feeling in between Christmas and New Year (or the 'festive perineum', as my uncle calls it). On Monday we got our Christmas present of a certified play-off place. We were full with chocolate and probably very giddy. There’s been a four-day week when people don’t really care about work. And then on Saturday we have our own little end-of-year celebration where we’re out later than we should be (it’s a 5:30 ko, just as a little reminder).

There’s no denying that Saturday, unlike New Year’s Eve, is going to be a corker of a day. Yes, we’ve got our place in the play-offs but who are we going to be playing? I’m excited just thinking about it. At the moment your London Diary has to work on Saturday, but I’ve been shortlisting excuses of how I can get out of work all morning. If you have any suggestions please do send them across, or if you have a pregnant wife or girlfriend (ideally eight months gone) who I can borrow for plausibility, then that would be great.

See, I can picture the scenes in Essex at 7:15 already. Fingers on touchscreens constantly refreshing, the old school black and whites among us with their trusty wireless earpiece glued to their lugholes, desperately trying to listen to the scores above the constant chanting from the away fans. It’s going to be proper football and proper football as we know it. We all know that Braintree want this as much as anyone, but Halifax and Gateshead are both playing at home and Cambridge have lost their last three in a row. Who do we want? I don’t know. I don’t care. I can feel the butterflies already. You can shove your Survival Sunday on Sky Sports up your rears. This is how it's really done.

The mood in the camp is good at the moment. The players are tweeting happy things. Hurstststs has faith in his players. A striker is scoring. Rodman has nice hair. The sun is shining. There's a goal of the season video to watch. I'm not a praying man, but do whatever you have to do for us to be smiling on 18 May. UT (bloody) M!