Cod Almighty | Diary
What shall we use to fill the empty spaces?
9 May 2025
Your usual Friday diarist has done a Donovan and injured himself in the warm up, so it's last-minute-emergency-oh-god-what-are-we-going-to-do-panic-stations diarist, otherwise known as BOTB, giving you some words.
Do you ever perversely find yourself wanting the football season to end? Are there times when the emotional roller-coaster gets too much and you long to find yourself back at the hook-a-duck eating an ice cream and trying hard to avoid throwing up gently in a bin? Yeah, me too. In my experience this tends to last about a week, until the next Saturday comes along and there's a big fat load of nothing happening. Saturdays in summer are like looking at a blank canvas and realising you only have white paint left. They're like sitting on a piano stool, lifting the lid and realising the only thing you can play is Fur Elise and you've forgotten how it starts. It's the time you realise that people go on roller-coasters for a reason.
Oh, yeah, sure, you can pretend to care about the play offs. I mean, ideally, we'd want both Notts Co and Chesterfield to stay down for travel purposes, but if one goes up it's not going to ruin our day. I realised I didn't even know who was in the FA Cup final this year, but now I do I'd quite like Crystal Palace to win it on the basis that they aren't Manchester City. But again, it fails to ignite anything other than passing interest. It's football, and football is entertaining, and all of these fixtures will have someone somewhere tearing their nails out and chewing their hair. But not us.
In the olden days some of us would have the consolation of supporting an England cricket team. Now I know cricket isn't for everyone, and if you're not a fan I'll try and explain briefly why that simple joy has been diluted. Previously England would welcome Australia or South Africa or someone and we'd play a five match test series that only overlapped slightly with the football season. There'd be a series of fun one day matches and then it would be all back to Blundell Park for the cold and the pies. I haven't even looked at the schedules this year but I suspect it looks something like this:
May 22nd - triangular 20-20 Tournament with Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.
May 24th - The 100! against Wales
May 27th - one-off test match against Pakistan
June 2nd - rectangular 20-20 tournament with Ireland, Australia and The Sudan
June 6th - ovoid 50-over tournament against ourselves
June 22nd - The 100! against The Sudan
July 14th - 20-20 one-off against West Indies
July 29th - octagonal 20-20 tournamant against India, Sri Lanka, Ireland, The Sudan, Afghanistan, Australia and Holland.
Aug 9th - one-day international against South Africa
Aug 25th - my birthday! I'm going out for an ice cream
Sept 2nd - three test matches against India on the same day
Sept 29th - one-day international, 20-20 and The 100! against Burkino Faso.
Or, to cut a long and boring story diary short, it's far too complicated and unless you pay close attention to it you'll have no idea what is going on and where. Plus the good bits are always after the football season has started again so no-one is watching. If cricket is reading this, could you sort yourself out please? Thank you.
So, tomorrow it's Saturday. You could paint the fence?