Cod Almighty | Diary
If...
25 April 2025
Due to the bank holiday, you were spared an entry from A46 Diary last week. Probably for the best. I'd planned to have a good grumble about Artell's public outing of Tharme and how such outbursts generally presage a downturn in form and that the Easter weekend would probably see the end of our play offs. Friday's child was indeed full of loving and giving as we handed over every inch of BP to Runaway's Reds and Monday's child saw that last-gasp equaliser full in the face.
I had not been aware that Monday's child was full in the face. When I started that sentence I’d been hoping it was full of woe but that's Wednesday's. I thought about lying. Then I knew that I was suffering from the what-ifs. Four more points from the last two away games and we'd already be safe in the top seven, perhaps even looking up to the top thr...No, stop, no what-ifs and no if-onlys, we're where we are for a reason: we can't keep the goals out. We've managed just nine clean sheets this season. The 66 we've conceded is the most in the top 17, and only two teams, Newport and Accrington, have conceded more. Even Tranmere have conceded fewer while both of the bottom two, Carlisle and Morecambe, have conceded the same amount. If only...
Dropping Wright for Eastwood felt like the right move. At the start of the season when Artell made the same decision it worked, and Eastwood's performance on Monday was a pretty much error-free. But Wright can't be blamed for everything. The two goals on Monday, offside or not, were too easy for Port Vale, and that's been this season's chronic issue. Like arthritic aardvarks, the Mariners have failed to snuffle out the opposition ants at key moments, freezing or hesitating or ooh-me-kneeing.
And the picnic's ruined. Again.
Nothing's actually ruined yet, of course, and as Artell so often points out, we are in a position that we wouldn't have dared dream of back in August, so we can look to tomorrow with an explorer's eye as an expeditionary force reconnoitring for our assault on the League Two championship next season. Enjoy the rarest of feelings as these last two games are win-win: go up or be in a much stronger position for another season in League Two. I'll take either of those scenarios right now and I'd have snapped your hand off back in August to have the promise of those outcomes.
Yesterday's West Yorkshire Diary covered much of the build-up to this weekend's game, so I'll not repeat the franchise grievance today. Suffice to say that a win tomorrow is worth two regular wins.
Therefore, and as it is the eve of the last away game of an amazing away season, it seems like the right time to celebrate. Ten wins and four draws, 31 for and 32 against, 1.55 points per game. (In a monochrome season for the black whites, this almost perfectly mirrors the home form: ten wins and three draws, 30 for, 34 against, 1.5 points per game.) Ten wins. A double-hand count, our own little decimal system of joy. The best? Doncaster? Walsall? Either? Both? Probably.
But go back to the autumn and the nights drawing in on our away hopes. In the 23/24 season we'd won just two and at the start of this season we lost to Fleetwood, lost to Notts, lost to ten-man Chesterfield, went 1-0 and 2-1 down against Carlisle. Town's away form was awful. At Brunton park as the 80th minute ticked over it was looking like another loss. That's what we did on the road, we died, our bodies scattered across the railways and the hard shoulders of motorways up and down the country. But not this time, not on this day, not on these players' watch! A 2-3 win, then a second as we rode the roads and rails to the other end of the country and Gillingham are beaten 0-1, then Salford 1-2, then Tranmere and Wimbledon overtaken 0-1. Five in a row, just three conceded, McJannet sealing the hope we'd felt pre-season, McEachran and Green becoming the players we never dreamt they would be and Obikwu seeming to grow taller with every minute on the pitch. What a time to be alive!
This season will be remembered for its away days. Many of us have laughed and sung and drank and danced and taunted and jeered and yes-yes-yessed in every corner of England. Up and down the country, Town fans came and saw and conquered, a black and white invasion, week after week, point after point. It's been a blast. Let's have one more tomorrow.