Cod Almighty | Diary

Typical Town

19 December 2025

Wednesday's BOTB diary insisted that Town, the 'typical Town', lose more, are more unlucky and are more likely to end another team's bad run than any other team ever in the footballing galaxy. Well, he's got a point, as, try as we might to be objective, it certainly feels that way. Last week your A46 Diary asked if it was better to be the average team or the good team scrapping for single points in a winless run that is now the worst since Artell's first few months in charge.

I do know the answer to that question: it's better as we are. That's hard to say right now, as the goals dry up and the keeper's orange-clad T-rex arms convulse as he falls like an autumn leaf buoyed on the wind. Over a pair of decades we've been conditioned to want the scrap, Pavlov-dogging at Parslow points and whining for treats, even in the non-league. Now we have those dreaded things: hope and expectation and the crushing disappointment that comes with them. Yet we're convinced we've been at the arse end of football in all the 147 years of our history.

It's not true. It can't be. It wouldn't make sense. Yes, we're at the top of those losing/conceding charts for all time Football League stats and yes, we've been relegated more times than anyone else. But that's just the badge of pride being the ones who've bounced around these divisions for as long as they've been there, playing and beating and losing to everyone. Winning and losing and drawing for decade after decade, paragraphs and chapters and tomes of misery punctuated by moments of elation. If anything is 'typical Town' then it's our obduracy, our stubbornness, our stickability. We'll be here ruining others' parties and crying at our own forever more.

Of course, the straw we're all clinging to is that it would be 'typical Town' to go and beat high-flying Bromley tomorrow. Another typicality of the Town fan psyche is the oxymoronic blind faith/pessimism that we've cultivated in nurseries around the East and West Marsh, up Scaffa, down the Lane, in Old and New Clee and down Meggies. We are raised to see neither sunshine nor the void, and yet both will blind us to everything else.

We won't be blind to Michael Cheek, I hope. He's their top scorer and third overall with nine so far this season. His stats are awful though. He's had 54 shots for those nine goals. Can't imagine a player who would be worse than that... Oh, okay, yeah, Vernam has had 56 and scored six. Ah well, shooting boots might be at a premium tomorrow then. Fingers crossed for a 0-0? Would you, as we so like to ask ourselves, take that now?

I'm not answering that. Dave tells us he never aims for a draw. England's batters never aim to be out, but hey ho. He also tells us Danny 'Warhorse' Rose may be fit. He's keeping his martial animal cards close to his chest, but he is delighted that Sweeney and Lavelle are both back and running and falling and getting up and running again. I love it when you talk clinically, Dave.

The Hayes Lane away end is a sell out and it now has a roof. Typically, the weather forecast says all this rain will stop. It's typical that we all get rained on more than anyone else. It's typical that a new roof will mean mild weather. It's typical that the Friday Diary will write lists of repetitive phrases, not, as some might cynically suggest, to boost the word count, but to create a compensatory rhythm so sadly lacking in Town's play these last six weeks. Time for the typical Friday alliteration (we're going plosive this week): Bromley's big lads would blunder with boogieing ball players. They did last year, so a win is the typical outcome, right? Are we all on board? No? Typical. Yes? Typical.