Cod Almighty | Diary

For goodness sake

21 October 2024

Miss Guest Diary writes: I have dragged myself from the treatment table (well sofa, really) to the laptop to muse about injury and recuperation – of which there has been a lot of the former but not much of the latter for quite a few Town players this season.

As revealed by Mr Deviant last week, I had a hip replacement which has led to a lot of stumbling around on crutches and needing assistance to do mundane things like putting on my socks. I didn't appreciate until I was in that position that the only way to carry anything when you're using crutches is to shove it under your arm or grasp it in your teeth. This works fine for a newspaper or a bar of chocolate but not so well with a cup of coffee or a book or a plate of sandwiches. A dressing gown with large pockets can be a great help, but not so much with the cups of coffee, so there's a lot of dependence on others for the bare necessities of life. And how anyone ever gets a good night's sleep when stranded on their back like a beetle with no possibility of turning even the minutest degree to the side, I can't imagine. I've watched an awful lot of Netflix dramas on my phone over the last 10 days – some of the Korean ones are quite entertaining. Who knew there was such a thing as hangover soup?

Currently Town have a long injury list; some will be recovering from relatively minor injuries, but others on that list and many Town players over the years will have had more serious issues and had to rely for long periods on crutches to get around. I have never previously given much of a thought to how they might have coped. While my rehabilitation is merely aiming towards being able to drive to the shops, climb a couple of flights of stairs to my sewing room, or put up the ironing board without assistance (and of course get back to watching the mighty Mariners), for players the aim is to return to running, kicking, tackling and, scariest of all, being tackled. What must it feel like to spend painful weeks or months recuperating and rehabilitating in the knowledge that another injury might happen on your return and put you right back on those crutches? My sympathy level for players like Charles Vernam who have suffered repeated injuries in their career has gone up a notch or two recently.

The silver lining for me was that I wasn't at Blundell Park on Saturday to watch another Town capitulation, so I can't make any comment about the match. If you want to know more you can read Mr Butcher's report - after a heavy defeat the report is usually more entertaining than the match was anyway.

Tomorrow Town travel to Tranmere – not a happy hunting ground for the Mariners this century and synonymous with our drop to the fourth division in 2004. If you're going to the game, wrap up warm – my only experience of an evening game at Prenton Park is the 3-2 defeat back in October 1999 when it was so cold we stopped on the way to the match so that I could buy some extra socks. At least I could put them on for myself that evening!

UTM