Ickle Scunny

“Au contraire,” argue the rosy cheeked and blandly smiling jester hats. “It’s not the winning but the taking part that counts. Ickle Scunthorpe done good.”

Fiddlesticks – as they say in the anthem-swelled bars and beer houses of Hull. The whole world loves a winner and the only good reason for competing is to be one.

Good grief, sometimes I swell up with embarrassment when I read how plucky Scunny did well not to get thrashed. What a small club we are and how well we do to even exist.

“We could not have done more. They’ve got more fans/money/seats than us” whine jester hats – complete with stretched polyester and claret and blue balloons – in excuse for pathetic surrenders against the likes of Man City.

Oh really? Then try knitting, you‘re boring me and you’re supporting the wrong club. Try Bottesford Town.

How terribly small-time this whole sorry attitude is. How very English, if truth be known. Begin as you mean to go on – with annihilation excuses at earliest juncture. It’s a hoodwinking trick as English as tea and crumpets and as limp as day-old watercress sandwiches. Find glory in defeat and hope that in time no one will remember you were worse than useless.

Delilah would have conquered Samson only because low morale, due to poor local hairdressing services, had forced our hero to entrust his mop-top into a stranger’s hands... and the lions had unfair advantage over appallingly under-funded Christians.

Was it always this way? Was this once great club always so shamefully shy of openly and bravely playing to win, fighting for the best, aiming for the top without excuse?

When did we lose the decency to be shame-faced and genuinely apologetic for humiliating defeat invited by lack of preparation, too little commitment, next to no focus and good old fashioned fire in the belly extinguished by wet blanket?

That was probably around about the time we accepted the one-failure-fits-all philosophy that we are where we are and we‘ll never be any higher/we‘re punching above our weight because we‘re not playing in Conference North. And nobody loves a loser and no one wants to be unloved. They can say that again... to all these jester hats.

And no matter how many times Burnsy, Matt Dean or Mr Small-time himself George Kerr try to soften the blow by blaming big-buck television rights sales and schedules for rushing us into playing too much, too often, with not enough fans, backers or money, the fact remains that when we lose, thousands of fans who pay the earth to follow their heroes on a credit card debt and a promise of glory return home disappointed.

Stand up like men Iron, be counted and when you lose, concede you were outclassed because you simply weren’t good enough and had no idea how to be good enough because you foolishly came to believe it was the taking part that counted.

It wasn’t. Isn’t. To those who give you your privileged lifestyles of minor celebrity, modest wealth, and WAGS on (win or lose), by paying hard-earned, ill-afforded money to cheer you on in confident hope of your giving your best, it’s the winning that counts... and only the winning.

Perhaps it’s only now that Wharton and Co are beginning to realise it.