The Greatest Show On Earth

Made the right call going to the Grand Final last Saturday, didn’t I? It was an absolutely lovely day, thank you for asking. After losing to them in the GF approximately 78 times, we finally put one over Leeds. Between that and the cricket it’s not been a good week for Yorkshire. Happy days.

The Bromley game on the other hand……. Ooh la la. Happy clapper Dave Bradley described it on the Latics Football Phone In as “one of the most abject, embarrassing, sad, tragic, rubbish, crap performances I’ve ever seen”. One of the most abject, embarrassing, sad, tragic, rubbish, crap performances you’ve seen SO FAR, David. Getting battered on a plastic pitch with actual literal moving goalposts is probably a new low. This season was always going have plenty of those. We’re (hopefully) at rock bottom, and it’s going to take time to climb back up.

It’s worth remembering the horrendous trajectory we’ve been on for years, and taking the positives from the direction the club is now moving in. Yesterday, the newly formed Oldham Athletic Disability, Inclusion and Diversity supporters’ association (OADID) met with Darren Royle and Frank Rothwell to discuss what improvements the club can make for disabled supporters. It was only a few months ago that the only ‘supporters’ the club wanted to meet with were the Realistic wrong ‘uns.

(image © OADID )

Improving the team is clearly a massive job that’s going to take time, but David Unsworth is already making his mark. In addition to Jamie Carragher’s son, Richie Wellens’ son, Dean Windass’ son and Terry Cooper’s grandson, we now have Wayne Rooney’s brother John. He’s won this division with Barrow, scoring 19 league goals in the league-winning season, so we haven’t just signed him for the name and it’s a welcome addition. Hopefully by the time you read this we’ll have confirmed the signing of striker Joe Nuttall from Scunthorpe, as reported by Suzanne Geldard in the Oldham Times. Scunthorpe are exactly where I feared we would be this season – in the relegation places, the threat of administration looming. There’s always someone worse off, and for once, it isn’t us.

Onto Wrexham at home, then. And apparently it doesn’t get much bigger than that. The away tickets sold out in about half an hour. Wrexham, the Hollywood team of the division, with their superstar owners and their TV series, are apparently desperate to come to the glamour tie at Boundary Park. I can’t be arsed watching that documentary by the way. Disney+ picked the wrong club. Oh, it’s a big box office story, is it? Where’s your protests on the pitch, lads? Where’s your brass band? Where’s your ongoing police investigation into one of your players being assaulted after a game? Why isn’t your owner travelling to away matches on a trike? You want drama, you come to Boundary Park. Anyway, the match tomorrow is the hottest ticket in town. A Wrexham fan tweeted a screenshot of dubious veracity of someone offering £500 for two tickets in ‘the Fondop Talam Terrace’. I’m open to offers for my season ticket. We’ve got a lot of stick from fans of other National League clubs accusing us of arrogance, but there’s no doubt about it, we are genuinely massive.

As a Concerned Boundary Park Resident, I’m very nervous about the game tomorrow, but not in relation to matters on the pitch. There’s been a lot of speculation that there’ll be aggro after the match, and we’ve got a bit of history with Wrexham. (Did they really kick off in the Rose of Lancaster once? Very odd behaviour.) It’s unfortunate, then that the gas pipes are currently being replaced on our road, and both sides of the street have been dug up, so there’s big piles of lumps of concrete everywhere. And the house over the road is being renovated, so there’s a skip outside it full of bricks and wood and rubble. Absolutely fucking ideal, well done to all involved.

Fears for our windows aside, I’m really not too worried about the game today. Playing the team that’s second in the league and favourites to go up, with a load of our players out injured, a week after they won 6-0 and we got battered on Astroturf? Free hit, isn’t it? No-one’s expecting us to get anything out of the game, so maybe the pressure’s off and we might spring a surprise. It’ll be our biggest crowd in years, and we’ll have the bonus of watching our respective ‘firms’ slipping on the wet grass on the Clayton and ending up on their arses while running away from each other. It’ll be fun. Keep your Disney series and your Hollywood owners. We know who the real stars in this league are. It’s Always Sunny In Oldham.

Written by Arlene Finnigan