Cod Almighty | Diary

We are Town, we are Town, we are Town

12 February 2020

Miss Guest Diary writes: Blimey! What a hat-trick from Charles Vernam last night. Who'd have predicted that a couple of months ago?

On Monday Trentside Diary suggested that we need a chant for our hat-trick hero – now more than ever. That got me pondering where football chants come from. Do a group of blokes sit down in a pub and make them up?

If so, I'd like to terminate with extreme prejudice the group that thought it was a good idea to appropriate a song from Paint Your Wagon for the "We're on our way..." chant which was ever-present in our last couple of years in non-League. Thankfully it's no longer a feature – probably because since returning to the League the only place we've looked like going is back to non-League, and who wants to sing about that?

Some songs arise more organically – like the mournful wail about Omar Bogle, which I seem to recall came out of one bloke singing it at a Notts County game back in 2016. I suspect the John Lewis chant about his name being a shop also arose fairly spontaneously. On Saturday there was a half-hearted rendering by a few in the crowd of "Mattie Pollock his name is a fish", but like anything too contrived it sank like a stone.

I was pleased to hear several renderings of Sing When We’re Fishing, including one after the final whistle at the instigation of Ian Holloway. I suspect he knows full well the value of terrace chants which are unique to a club. I was only disappointed that we didn't follow it up – as we used to in the past – with "We piss on your fish, yes we do, yes we do". But a rendition of "shit ground, no fans", usually sung ironically at big venues, was sadly absent. Maybe we lost our sense of irony during the non-League years when we were very much the big fish in the pool.

I was also pleased that I didn't hear any attempt to revive the awful Yorkshire ripper chant which plagued matches in Yorkshire during the '90s. I know insulting the opposition and their locale is all part of the tribal nature of football, but some things are beyond natural rivalry.

Did anyone else notice the song playing on the tannoy before kick off? A version of John Denver's Country Roads with the lyrics changed to refer to "Midland Road, Bantams, City", etc. It's one thing to adapt a song to sing on the terraces – Annie's Song with its references to packets of Woodbines and nights out in Nunsthorpe springs to mind – but something else to actually record it and play it at the ground. Cringeworthy.

I feel grateful that Town have their very own rousing songs to play. The wonderful Up the Mariners is not only a great song, it is an original and not a bastardisation of a cheesy pop song. For the first time this season I have actually heard it sung at games. And then there's Black and White (For You) the Orphan Boy anthem from 2015, which we played in the car on the way to the Bristol Rovers play-off final and which still has the power to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.

So, what about a song for Charles Vernam? Readers of the match reports will know that Mr Butcher has a fondness for describing him as The Wolds Panther (because he hails from Caistor). Maybe something based on the theme from the Pink Panther films? I'll pass this one over to that group of blokes in the pub. UTMM