Cod Almighty | Diary

Where the day begins

12 January 2022

The Shay hoodoo continued last night as Town lost 1-0 to table-toppers Halifax. Add "1-0 to a well-dodgy penalty" to the list stretching back to our last win there in 1978. The favourite of these is surely the 2-1 reverse in 1989 when Alan Buckley's side won the corner count 22-1 in a siege which the Telegraph said made Rorke's Drift look like a pleasant outing to Hubbards Hills. That night wasn't a complete loss, with several new verses added to the Pontoon staple of "We never score from corners".

Was last night without a positive? Well from a selfish point of view, Daubney didn't freeze bits off among the large travelling support, basking instead in the warmth of a nice fire and the social media heat fueled by another defeat.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, only a small percentage of Town fans get to games. Social media is one of the alternative ways many use to follow GTFC. It's a pity it becomes rather unpleasant after a defeat.

As an aside and to get away from last night, the criteria would have a huge bearing on the figure, but how many us poor suffering bastards are there? For example, if you applied a load of old cobblers as your critieria to a survey and then extrapolated it out, you'd get a laughable number like 1.1 billion. 

Lick of the finger in the air, would there be 50,000 Town fans worldwide who've been to a game in the last ten years? Send us your number and your criteria/workings.

Where were we? Ah yes, avoiding looking back at last night. We'll have Tony B's match report for that later. Looking forward, Seb Revan and Will Bapaga have returned to their respective clubs early. While happy to see the number of loanees reduced, we're looking light. Recruitment is obviously needed but will the emphasis be on a tilt at promotion or have a shrewd eye on next season and beyond?

Finally, in today's episode of "things that are just as you imagined they'd be yet still immeasurably worse than you'd imagined", John Fenty's pile is up for sale. Avoiding obvious jokes involving tyre-kickers and the additional £1.5 million any purchaser may owe for a conservatory job botched by several different builders including Russell 'The Builder' Slade and the Irish bloke from Fawlty Towers, we will say the interior looks it was crafted by an over-excited and possibly high Louis XIV with a fistful of Home World vouchers.

The virtual tour gives us to the chance to see old favourites such as the Considerably-richer-than-you Billiard Room, the Bum Art couch and the Fishy Rant PC. Access like this is akin to getting a tour of Abbey Road with a John Lennon tab end still smouldering in the ashtray. Safe to say, we at Cod Almighty are impressed enough to propose that we merge our upcoming 20th anniversary bash with Honest John's farewell party. This neatly sidesteps the Rutland's rules regarding suspect hairstyles after 8pm and automatically imbues us with Tory 'do whatever you fucking like' Covid party powers.