Cod Almighty | Diary

Humble pie and mash

30 May 2022

Miss Guest Diary writes: Almost unbelievable, perhaps. So said Paul Hurst when asked to sum up Saturday's game in a word. When I said last week that if Town could get past Notts County I fancied our chances at Wrexham, I could not have imagined - let's face it, who could – that we'd be treated to a nine-goal thriller.

I think we are probably all still recovering. As we left the ground a chap sat near us was surrounded by police and stewards after seemingly suffering some kind of medical emergency. I do hope he is OK now. I almost suffered an episode myself after Town's fourth goal – I jumped around so much that I had to sit down for the next few minutes with palpitations. But so worth it.

I'm going to eat a bit of humble pie now. Back in mid-March when Town had beaten Yeovil and crept back into the play-off places after our earlier poor run of form, I expressed the view that it would be better to finish eighth because finishing sixth or seventh would condemn us to two difficult away games and probably mean we'd have to travel all the way to Wrexham to lose in the semi-final. Ha! I'm definitely eating those words now.

Saturday's game has to be my all-time favourite Town-watching experience. Sure, I’ve been to other games which had more significance – the play-off finals at Wembley and Cardiff – or were more iconic – the football league trophy game against Bournemouth. But nothing can, and I suspect never will again, match the sheer seesaw of delight and despair and the ultimate triumph of beating Wrexham on Saturday. Apart from the result itself, which has given Town the opportunity to compete in the play-off final next weekend, there were so many contributing factors which sweetened the victory.

These included: being vastly outnumbered by the home fans but out-singing them anyway; winning despite feeling cheated by the incompetence of the officials; knowing that we have spoilt the ending for their Hollywood owners Netflix documentary; the 'law of the ex' working in our favour for once, with their ex (Waterfall) outdoing our ex (Palmer); that Town's winning goal came from a long throw, effectively beating them with their own tactics. Schadenfreude with knobs on.

Now it's off to London next weekend to play Solihull Moors in the final. Watching their semi-final game yesterday against Chesterfield was a bit of a snoozefest compared to our game, wasn't it. I was a bit torn about who I wanted to win. I don't like Chesterfield because of all the big talk earlier in the season about automatic promotion, so seeing them fail was quite sweet. But Solihull are a much better team and likely to pose more of a challenge. They have beaten us twice already this season, but then we beat Cheltenham twice during the 2005-6 season and we all know what happened in Cardiff.

Unfortunately, the shine has been taken off the final for many Town fans by the prices being charged at the London Stadium. It is bad enough that we all have to trail down to London anyway when there are perfectly good stadiums much nearer to both finalists – Hillsborough or Villa Park, for example – but £40 for a ticket plus £3 in administration charges when we all know the system is likely to be entirely automated is outrageous. And the additional 99p fee to email you the tickets is just taking the mickey.

I am fortunate in being able to afford the trip and I just hope that there will be enough who can make it to ensure fantastic support for the team. Then I recall being part of just 1,200 fans at Wrexham and the noise we made and the support we gave tells me there's no doubt about that.

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