Cod Almighty | Diary
Short and not sweet
4 February 2025
11 March is both the day of dreams and funeral directors' day. Newbegin Diary leaves it to you to anticipate whether that night we'll still be dreaming of promotion or will be dressed, metaphorically, in black, for that day we play our rearranged game against Notts County.
The omens are ordinary. The last time we played a game on 11 March, it was ten days after beating Southampton in the FA Cup. You remember that game, and the quarter final which followed. Do you remember anything at all from our 1-0 win over relegation-bound Rochdale? We ended that season 11th in the table.
I sometimes indulge the paranoid fantasy that one day Newcastle United will claim that their use of black and white stripes should have a protected status, like champagne and bakewell tarts, and wave some Saudi money around to threaten other clubs who use the same strip. Our St Zosimus Day opponents live under the same - entirely imaginary - threat.
However, our red socks offer us a distinction, a talisman against claims of intellectual property theft. As Jack Sargent writes, we also tend to play better in red.