Cod Almighty | Diary

The Manchester game I really regret missing is Farsley Celtic v Trafford

18 April 2019

With it falling so late this year, the Easter programme ought to be vital in a way it hasn't truly been since they stopped playing games on Friday, Saturday and Monday. But if clubs in the fourth flight are truly in a race, only Lincoln appear to have heard the bell for the final lap.

Our opponents tomorrow and on Monday are hardly mounting a push for the play-offs. Colchester and Carlisle have won just one game each in their last five fixtures. By the time we visit Notts County on Saturday week, their fate could have been sealed. But don't count on it. They and Macclesfield also have a win each to show for their desperate struggle to avoid the trap door. Yeovil meanwhile have adopted an unusual strategy: they are trying to get a head start on their promotion rivals next year by getting into the Conference as quickly as possible.

Town, of course, have been playing for nothing for quite some time. Our safety was finally confirmed at Morecambe last weekend – not so much from the late point we claimed as from Macclesfield, Notts County and Yeovil all losing. Targets are being reset, like a kindly coconut stall-holder bringing the tins forward to humour a three-year-old child. Promotion? Play-offs? When you are grown up, maybe. Meantime, let's see if we can do better than last year, and do better than the kids with holes in their shoes.

Michael Jolley's interview with BBC Humberside is worth listening to. Middle-Aged Diary is tempted to think there might be something in the air conditioning unit of the manager's office at Blundell Park. Jolley combines the Mattdeanophobia of Russell Slade, the snippiness of Paul Hurst and the acerbic wit of Alan Buckley ("My main frustration? The length of this interview").

But there is no need for conspiracy theories. If Jolley is beginning to sound like his predecessors, it is because he is battling with the same constraints. He doesn't complain but he is explicit, and the situation he describes is exactly the one that meant Paul Hurst felt the lure of the Shrews. We can't afford ready-made players in key positions, nor can we afford the coaching staff taken for granted at clubs with smaller gates: the coaching staff who could improve on raw talent and help turn them into an effective team.

Down the mean streets of Grimsby a man has gone who is not mean and who at least hid his fears. And if Michael Jolley seems tarnished now, it is because he has uncovered the hidden truth: he is the manager of a club 20 years behind the times, and its board imagines that by appointing a man with a first-class degree they have done all they need to do to catch up with our rivals.