In Douglas Adams' classic Hitchhiker series some of the very best jokes are the ones slipped in around the main story. The asides that take us into the odd happenings on unbelievably weird planets. In one such joke a character is sent off to find the creator of the universe. Having found him and found out the truth about life, the universe and everything, the character returns and happens to arrive in the middle of a trial. He has to take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So he starts telling things just the way they are, as told to him by the creator of everything. Pretty soon everyone's suspicions are confirmed. People realise things really are as bad, if not worse than they thought, and they end up encasing the whole court in concrete and leaving the poor sod to rant out his miserable message alone. So that was a joke. Really life can't be that bad. Can it? Gets you thinking about Carlisle eh? First off, when something is bad, I mean so miserably bad that you just know that a tragic truth lurks in the middle, you see the signs everywhere and just speculate on what it means. Really means. Secondly, when stuff is really bad there is a danger that anyone talking about how bad it really is is just gonna get ignored. You're tempted to keep on hoping. Well, let's not kid ourselves. This is probably the worst moment yet. Why? Because with 16 signings, 34 players on the books, a three point gap to 91st position as I write this and by the Fat Greedy One's own admission £7,000 per week worth of "talent" sitting out the games every week because they won't get a game under the present regime it's hard to see what is about to go right. That's £7,000 limited to the likes of Varty who might be fit to play but have come to frank exchanges of views with the manager. There's a whole team of players other than that not getting games cos we're limited to eleven on the pitch at any one time. The lying git, as usual, is a little wrong with his facts. He talks about the players sitting in the stands. If ALL the players who've fallen out with Roddy are actually sitting in the Brunton Park stands I haven't noticed them. The way things are going, the presence of every unpicked player might represent half the gate at some games. Maybe the ones not at BP are sitting out in stands somewhere else, like Workington, in the hope of getting a word in to get signed by a team with prospects in the near future. Maybe I'm just missing players in the stands cos they're coming in so fast nobody has time to get to know what they look like. F*** knows I spent long enough wishing I could write about Carlisle when I was younger. I never dreamed that telling it like I saw it would amount to admitting that the Carlisle team I support now is like the Workington team I chose not to support then. But it is. I've not been with Doom Monger or a few of the other negative voices over the last few years. But, all told, it looks to me like we're in need of a serious miracle now. More so than ever. It was obvious that a lot of Collins' pro-Knighton rhetoric was designed to smooth the way for some kind of deal. The whole Irish connection looked like the start of it. I'm not sure how I'd have felt about Collins' as part of a pair of brothers in the boardroom and dug-out. Then again, Steve Collins earned a few quid as a champion boxer by not hiding, squaring up to problems and being aware that the paying public responds to someone they see slugging it out to his honest best. Even during the times of greatest success I never felt that way about Knighton. At best he was shaping up to be the kind of blessing that Chelsea have enjoyed in the shape of Ken Bates. During the best and worst times their fans have always felt a distance to that larger than life figure. Would Steve Collins have been a good long term bet at BP?, never. Is he someone who might just have been good enough to get us to a finish in the top 80 teams, yeah, I think so. How many other people who could save us really fancy the job? Dunno. These interested parties keep cropping up in the odd FGB comment to the press. They're not exactly standing up and being counted any other place. Either, they're figments of his imagination. Or they're so close to home that he knows their names cos they're on his Christmas card list. Since FGB himself admits to being the most hated man in Cumbria, and since he's disappointed enough professional associates through unpaid bills and the rest that even people who know nothing about Carlisle hear muttering about the need to avoid business contacts with the man and all his lackys, it wouldn't surprise me to find his Christmas card list itemising his family and no-one else. In fact, maybe the initials MAMCARR started life on the scrap of paper listing people still prepared to speak to him. Who else would be interested in running Carlisle at this moment? When I was a kid Workington were a league team. Steady strugglers, tipped for relegation ceaselessly and only saved by a stinking system of croneyism that amounted to a lock out most years. 92 professional clubs voting on the fate of those placed between 89th and last. Workington survived over ten dices with death like this before being dumped out of the professional game in 1977. Around Christmas on most of those seasons the other strugglers would have their grim tactical master plans in place and the slugging for survival would be up and running. That, at least, was what we've seen in previous seasons. Nigel Pearson, grim, gritty and just about worth the last minute survival. In fact, on balance, probably a little unlucky to have gone that close to the wire given the thin spread of talent over the Scarboro squad. Martin Wilkinson, hmmm! Thank f*** for Chester City's early season form and one completely surreal game at the Deva Stadium. Ian Atkins knew the score. Not pretty, not noted for his love of ball players or young talent but a man we'd welcome right now eh? I said in this column a while ago I'd reserve my judgement on Collins until after Rushden, so I'll stick to my word. But I'll still stand up and admit this year I'm more scared than I was with the last three in the dug-outs. Sorry, two in the dug-out and Wilkinson safe behind glass in the East Stand. What the hell was that all about? Scared because the same farce on selling the club goes on. People muttering about meetings that didn't come off and FGB claiming innocence and pointing out there is no evidence. Michael, fer f***'s sake, you can't wipe a schoolkid's nose or lose a supermarket trolley these days without someone having to fill in forms. Any business obliged to give a shit is knee deep in paperwork proving they do things the right way. Shame about Carlisle United eh? Would you buy a used car from someone who didn't write things down and had to meet you miles away from the showroom? Scared because, for better or worse, at this time of the season we'd normally got some kind of slugging, ugly consistency and a team of sorts grinding it out. Okay, Wilkinson's master plan trusted our survival to the matchless skills of Durnin and McKinnon, but we had a team. The present massive squad knee deep in resentful exclusions isn't gonna help anyone on the training ground. Hell, how many mobiles keep flashing messages from agents in a week? If a substantial chunk of that big squad are still around near transfer deadline day the management - whoever it is by then - won't be able to get a word in for players swapping agents phone numbers and details on the best escape routes. You could be charitable and call that team spirit, but it won't lead to points in the league table. So, yeah, this is scary. Because with December here we haven't got consistency or any real way of judging our chances against the others. Away at Barnet the front line was, near enough, a complete disgrace and Keen was man of the match. A few weeks before, the defence were hopeless and our biggest need was a new goalkeeper. The problem is that most of the competition for that place in the Conference know the score too and I've taken to dropping in on the odd message board for Exeter and Halifax. It's stuff you'd recognise. Crap players, managers who could do better and the rest. But we're lifting their spirits and those teams at least have settled squads and some sense of how they're gonna try and save themselves. How the gaps will be plugged. They've spent a fraction of our outlay and their wage bills next to ours are survivable. We could still do it and I'm the last one to quit on this team. But it's time for honest admissions of fear. We're only gonna survive with consistency and some shape we can play to. Something simple, uncompromising and gritty. Y'know, Ian Atkins tactics. That's the proven strategy below 80th place. It's the only strategy, just ask 'em in Exeter. Next month, I'll deliver on the promised Collins rant, assuming he's still around! Neil Nixon |
