Cod Almighty | Diary

North East Lincs will rise again

25 September 2015

Retro Diary writes: Matters in the top echelons of football are largely decided by a club's ability to afford the wages and transfer fees of the players with the most talent and flair – those with the ability to 'unlock' other teams. As one descends the leagues the amount of talent declines exponentially, meaning that it's more important to rely on things for which talent isn't necessary.

Height, physicality, fitness and organisation are the obvious ones. Doing the simple things right is essential – such as lining up in a formation everyone understands and keeping your shape. Play to the whistle, don't lose concentration in the first and last minutes, hit the target, and if in trouble in the rear third, it's row Z.

Some teams have tried eliminating midfield errors by launching it the length of the pitch, or by having a player who turns throw-ins effectively into corners. But you have to accept that nobody will like you if you do that, including possibly your own fans.

But I've missed out the most obvious one, given the match-changing capabilities of our friends, referees. Refs give penalties and send people off, which gives them much more power to turn a game in your favour than any long throw. Surrounding and bullying the ref is one of the simplest and most obvious ways of changing a game I can possibly imagine, and we see week after week that it works disconcertingly well.

If you sit in the Main or Lower Findus you'll know how often sleeping linesmen can be moved to wake up and lift their flag just by a defender raising his hand. Similarly, refs will give free kicks when a player simply sits down, as long as he gives a little yelp of mock pain as he does it. Prolonged whining by half the team after every minor brush of socks, even if it can't be proven to actually change the flavour of his decisions, will at the very least make the ref wish for it to stop, which might be enough.

I haven't at any time in this account, you notice, suggested intentional bias, so please be calm. Why am I mentioning this now? Well, I'm not saying. Just to say that Gateshead were bad for it in the last couple of years.

If it works, can you blame teams for doing it? I think you can – but the answer surely is for refs to be alive to it and make sure it doesn't pay. Sadly, this is rare. Talking of the Wrexham game on Tuesday (oops, was that another clue – and gosh, don't those two teams share a manager?), Town recorded their first 0-0 draw for forty-something matches. Weirdly, they chose the game where they came most under the cosh to keep a clean sheet, and the first time they have had four really good strikers all raring to go at once, not to score. But as results go, we'll give it our qualified approval.

So that part of the season where a single win can move you half the length of the table is now over, and any progress from now on (and we trust there will be some) is likely to be relatively ponderous. We spent all last season saying "if we can beat Barnet twice". We did, and it didn't matter. Already this season there are a couple of teams whom it would be helpful to beat twice, and who's to say it will matter this time either. We'll get a chance to beat one of them once, at least, next weekend, and in a way we've skipped ahead to that important home clash in our minds, while rather taking for granted tomorrow's now routine visit to Southport.

I'm sure I'm not the only Town fan to have a mild affinity with Southport. Someone my age will always think of them as a venerable old League team – never far up the ladder, but ever–present. I stood in the Barrett for the last fourth division clash between the two teams – as it happened, one of Southport's very last games as a League club.

It was a comfortable 2-0 victory for Town, on the same night that my brother, aged 11, lay in hospital waiting to have an eye operation. He listened to the game on hospital radio, I seem to remember – indeed, hospital was the only place you got to hear Town on the radio in those days. We were all glad of the win – although football is pretty trivial compared with having a general anaesthetic and a knife in your eye, such things, as part of the tapestry that makes life worth bothering with, can and do help.

Northern holiday resorts are characterful and anachronistic in many of the same ways, and the parallels between Southport and Cleethorpes are hard to ignore. Both sit within sandy maritime skyscapes where an estuary meets the sea. The wide expanses of salt-soaked mud and the jingle of the slotties are the same, the scooter rallies and the airshows over the sands, and the fish and chips.

But Southport is posher, plusher and balmier than Cleethorpes. Its defining Victoriana is showier and better-kept. On the map, Southport is surrounded by population centres and many, much bigger football teams. Cleethorpes, on the other hand, has more of a frontier feel – airily floral, but colder, more functional, and surrounded by miles and miles of mostly competitor-free space. Both sets of fans are motivated to loyalty by different essential geographies, but the same sea views, neon lights, the smell of batter and burnt sugar, and the feeling that they're in a place which, while replete with nostalgic resonance, doesn't routinely feature on the news.

Southport have traditionally been more firmly connected to the bottom of the pile than Town. Since being dumped out of the League in 1978 (they were the last team to fall foul of the re-election system) they have skipped occasionally between tiers five and six. Already poor relations to so many of their neighbours, they have now also been humiliatingly overtaken by Fleetwood, Morecambe and Accrington, and if there were any justice in the promotion system, Fylde would now be above them as well. (In the Conference North last season Fylde, you may remember, finished a full 15 points ahead of Guiseley, who eventually came up through the play-offs.)

Southport currently sit third from bottom, as many points below Town as Town are below Forest Green. They've had a rough old start to the season, having found it difficult to score goals. Richard Brodie signed a new contract in the summer but was gone by halfway through August – reading between the lines, the manager got fed up with him. The fans are still at that stage, which happens everywhere he goes, when they are arguing about whether the goals were worth having such a twat at their club. They're not, by the way.

You'll notice a change at Haig Avenue – they've got smart new floodlights. Indeed, so new are they that they haven't been used yet. From now on, Southport are set to play their evening games bathed in unforgiving halogen whiteness, and hopefully this will spur them on to more ground improvements. So that will be a roof on the away end, please, if we really must, and it seems increasingly likely, come back next year. Ta.

Unusually, both teams have drawn their last three matches. For us, Nathan Arnold may still be absent after the death of his mum – apart from that, only Scott Brown is completely unavailable. UTM.