Cod Almighty | Diary

Football will eat itself

7 June 2023

Daubney Diary writes: Regular readers are perhaps still reeling from West Yorkshire's recent exposé on the the crack transfer epidemic sweeping across football. Paul Hurst, known for being pickier than my Big Aunt Eva* in the fruit and veg aisle, has signed fifty-five players since he waltzed back into the building in 2021. Fifty-five! Players!

What does this mean? Well for a start, us toothless Town junkies are eagerly awaiting signing number fifty-six. One's too many, fifty-five's not enough as a wised-up sucker once sort of said. It's not our fault; the modern football fan is truly hooked on the one area where their team can compete with the billionaire bloaters of the Premier League: transfer window action. Volumes of "decent bits of business". Painfully elaborate social media "give the admin a raise" announcements.

That's what we're clinging to in the ghost towns and derelict football landscapes where true competition died years ago. And like all addicts, we're just running to stand still in the middle of division four. Imagine for a minute Hursty had tangoed in and avoided relegation in 2021, steering us to a couple of mid-table finishes with the addition of a Buckleyian or Kerrsian number of three signings in the time since. Booo, do something, no ambition Town, we're rubbish, sack the board.

Scrap that thought. Hypotheticals are a load of old bollocks so let's not waste your time. Proof? A recent observation from people skilled at finding the chip on the rim of their half empty glass was that if you take the cup run out, then last season was an underachieving disappointment. But what if instead of hypothetically taking the cup run out we put a promotion in? Hell, have a championship where we went unbeaten and won the title by twenty points while you're at it. What a spiffing season and if my Aunt Evas had balls they'd be my Uncle Evas. In theory. It's a complicated area these days. 

With all these real comings and goings, Town had the sense to appoint a head of recruitment. Sensible in that a manager can't focus on day-to-day managery things like tactics, planning his touchline clobber, and trying to remember his players' names whilst also finding hordes more to sign. Unfortunately this sort of progress comes with a ready-made truncheon to beat the club with if the HOR doesn't manifest a Clive Mendonca and two Paul Groveses in his first season.

If that sounds unreasonable, how about we make do with bringing in the new Ryan Bennett. Or the actual older Ryan Bennett even. Yes, if your t'internet rumours are to be believed, Ryan's return to Town is a done deal (insert handshake and biro emojis).

The brochure says he comes with a skillful air of sophistication at the back, and evokes happy memories of the halycon 2009 GTFC era when he was club captain aged about 12. This was shortly before Honest John Fenty got out-Delboyed by Barry Fry, and the sell-on clause small print from Peterborough revealed we were entitled to a royal dicking and a bag of lightly-used Mitres, the latter being optional. 

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. I might go mix some sand and cement mortar. Everyone should mix cement at one point in their life, it's good for the soul. The measure of the ingredients; the little volcano you create before adding just the right amount of water; the pleasing contrast of sounds that follows, the scrape of the point of the shovel on the board, the slop of the cement into the pile; the little cutting thing you do with the shovel. Sorry, this isn't building towards an analogy for building a team, it's just me rambling about cement. It was this or laugh at Salop internet rumours for a couple of sentences if they think Paul Hurst is joining them again.

See ya and UTM.

*Big Aunt Eva wasn't big in the King Kong sense, smashing up Freemo every time she went out for the milk before shinning up the Dock Tower to swat off bi-planes, she was normal sized. She was however about an inch and a half taller than my Little Aunt Eva. I say an inch and a half, now there was very little in it to be fair, and in the right pair of shoes and depending on hairstyle there was less in it still.