Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 2 November 2006

2 November 2006

The five years since Town bizarrely topped the Football League for a day have been characterised by poor executive decision-making, excessive use of the loan system, dwindling attendances, hopeless football, relegation, disappointment, cynicism, misery and despair. Oh, and players taking it in turns to do interviews where they say: "I don't know why we're doing so badly in the league. It's not like we're rubbish or anything. We just need to string two or three results together and we'll be up there in the play-offs," only for the team to go without a win in their next half-dozen games, failing to register a single shot on target at Gigg Lane and Gay Meadow and blundering from one defensive catastrophe to another. This week it's the turn of loanee AM/F RL Kevin James, who enjoyed a super debut when the Mariners claimed a rare away point at Peterborough last weekend and is still sufficiently full of the joys of life today to proclaim to a global Mariners World audience of millions that a spectacular ascent up the fourth division league table is just a matter of time for Rodgerses's battlers. Well, I assume that's what he says from the fact that the headline thing reads James: Town Are Better Than This, anyway, because I haven't actually bothered looking at the interview. Heard one, you've heard 'em all.

Even if Kev means every word he says - and who are we to doubt him; it's not like professional footballers have ever left us disappointed - his mission to make us believe cannot be helped by GTFC sending out adverts in their emails that look like this. Take comfort, reader, that if our club ever ceases to exist then sooner or later somebody will reinvent it as the basis for a TV sitcom.

It should be a cracking read here tomorrow, when Guest Diary will be rubbing his hands in glee at the sentencing in the Boston fraud trial. Until then all that remains is to note that, like many citizens of his namesake city, Steve Hull seems to enjoy a fight - but his preference is for a civilised kind, conducted by email with the Diary. "Perish the thought, but do I note a grammatical error with 'paradoxes'?" he asks, referring to yesterday's shooting-fish-in-a-barrel job the Diary did on the hopeless OS match report for Tuesday's no-show at Mansfield. If you can think of a better plural for 'paradox' then I'd be delighted to hear it, but go on. "A quick google confirms my suspicions, and throws up an amusing couple of alternatives: parodies or paradise. I don't think the latter would be suitable for a Town match report." No, but the former would - if the OS were not taking the piss already.