Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 21 October 2009

21 October 2009

On Monday morning the Diary could hardly bring myself to look at the list of contenders for the job of Grimsby manager, because the common denominator of failure in the chairman's office means it will barely make a difference who's in charge of the team. On Tuesday morning I looked at the list of contenders and buried my head in my hands out of utter despair at the poverty of available talent. On Wednesday morning I saw that Dean Windass was considered by the media to be a frontrunner, and said to myself: "Come on - Fenty might be an inarticulate Tory fish magnate who has casually discarded his much-avowed new commitment to managerial stability at the first sign of trouble, but he wouldn't be that daft, surely?"

Now it's Wednesday afternoon, and if the Diary were a lot more credulous and a lot less cynical and jaded from Town's relentless decline over the past decade - not to mention the culture of cheerful incompetence that continues to corrode the fabric of the club - then I might even have allowed myself to grow slightly excited in the last hour. Why? The Lincolnshire Echo, remarkably, is reporting one "shock contender" for the job as Hope Powell, the gifted manager of England women. Powell, of course, boasts fabulous credentials after transforming England into one of the world's leading sides in the face of huge cultural resistance and a desperate lack of resources. Windass, meanwhile, had a fight with Marlon King in a casino and boasts a head shaped like a potato.

The Diary is quite certain I read somewhere the other week that Powell was due to make some sort of appearance in Grimsby which was entirely unconnected with the vacancy at Blundell Park (I just can't seem to find it again now because the story has hit the messageboards and flooded out my Google search), so the overwhelming likelihood is simply that somebody's spotted her at Millfields Hotel, put two and two together and come up with a 90-foot gerbil sculpted entirely from green snow. But I'm also quite certain I read somewhere earlier this year Powell saying she fancied a stab at the men's game sometime - and would an occasionally respected newspaper such as the Echo risk its modest reputation on running so attention-grabbing a story with no real evidence beyond the feeble wittering of a web forum?

Oh, come on. We all know the desperate state of British journalism. But never mind that for now! Powell is the only candidate mentioned so far, realistically or otherwise, whose employment at Blundell Park would have the Diary feeling anything other than ennui, loathing, existential despair and emotional exhaustion. So while the story is surely the biggest load of old cobblers this side of a Northamptonshire sheltered housing scheme, it's at least brightened up my week. And given the way the Diary felt on Monday morning, that's no small achievement at all.