Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 4 August 2009
4 August 2009
What can we expect from the new season? Another year of disappointment and broken hopes, or a genuinely fresh start with the worst put behind us forever? Town's superb new official website is promising "A Brand New Matchday Experience", with the new Mariners Player subscription service, which replaces Mariners World and offers "near DAB quality live audio of every Town game this season. There's also Match Stats as they happen, Team Line-ups and Info, All the Latest Incidents and Live League Tables". And there I was expecting plain old match stats, team line-ups and info, all the latest incidents and live league tables. "Mariners Player works on Mac and PC worldwide so there's no excuse to miss a single game," apparently. One assumes there's something in the small print about when the SNOS is forced to run an item headlined "Commentary Problems Resolved" every alternate Monday.
What's that? Oh, the actual football. Well, automatic promotion, obviously. Al Wilkinson has emailed the Diary to say "I'm looking forward to the new season with just as much excitement as I always do. And to add my twopenn'orth to the friendly entry fee thing, I can see the bright side of the price hike over the last few years: I never bother any more and I never liked them anyway, so I no longer spoil the start of the season. The start of the season should feel new, the players a little unfamiliar: new faces in new strips and new hair on old faces. The pitch should be so green that you can't quite believe it and the seat should feel just a little bit cold and impersonal so that you can rub your bum on it till it feels right. It should feel like coming home after a long holiday to a place that's OK to visit but you wouldn't want to live there." I suppose that's exactly what Cleethorpes is, isn't it?
Al continues: "I'm happy to say that I've already lost track of who's in the squad; I know that when I first sit down it'll take all of the first half to realise who everyone is; I'll bug the chap next to me who went to all the pre-season friendlies like he does every year to tell me all about them instead of just watching them. Then I will watch them and I'll decide if I like them. Three matches later I'll have changed my mind a dozen times about each player and by mid-October I'll lose myself in fond memories of Paul Groves. Same as every year. Lovely. See you all soon." Aw. I wish we were at home this Saturday now!
Jeremy Baily, meanwhile, has some suggestions for ways to fill the Diary on these last few frustrating slow news days before the season kicks off. "Do something on Chester or Darlington," he urges. "They are both in deep poo, it would seem. Laugh at Shrewsbury going through the same 'Rats leaving sinking ship' as we had after losing a play-off final. Run a piece about the Mariners Museum. The list goes on and on. Take a chill pill and have a couple of beers (real ale, obviously) - that will sort you out and you'll hopefully come out all guns blazing!" Well, now I know where to go next time we need a stand-in diarist. Thanks Jeremy - and thanks to you all for keeping the Diary afloat with your emails all summer long. I feel quite moved!