Cod Almighty | Diary

So who's buying ME an island?

3 August 2015

Hello to you from your original/regular Diary in a new Monday slot! It's the start of the final week before the season, we've got an excellent-looking squad with a superb pre-season under its belt, our strong support and spirit of fundraising togetherness have made us the envy of many a club these past weeks, there's an unprecedented surge of optimism around the club, and Town fans are still proving desperately insecure and needy in their strange obsession with the every utterance of a random bloke on Twitter who works for a bookie. Have a wonderful day!

So yer Mariners pulled themselves through a ropey second-half display at Boston on Saturday to make it a remarkable nine friendly wins out of nine this summer (the draw and loss on penalties at Grantham, of course, being a Lincolnshire Cup tie and absolutely not a friendly). Perhaps there was one pre-season kickabout too many this time. Still, at least the Dayle Southwell hat-trick was averted, and he only bumped into Tony Butcher's trolley in Tesco after the game. Gregor Robertson is still nowhere in sight. Can Danny East actually play left-back? Omar Bogle was absent again, but at least he has three years to get fit.

Town's annual open day was yesterday, in case you missed it, and it looks very much from the nice pictures like the requisite good time was had by all. I was hoping to take the now six-year-old Baby Diary along to find a new object of hero worship now that Ollie Palmer and Lenell John-Lewis are no longer with us. The routine of a six-week-old Second Baby Diary, however, proved too great an obstacle. (Fellow parents will appreciate that at this stage the term 'routine' is used in its loosest possible sense.)

In retrospect, this is probably for the best. I tend not to deal very well with meeting footballers. For every Tony Ford at the Old Clee Middle School summer fair in 1980, there's both an Iain Ward looking in blank incomprehension at my hair and a Mrs Diary having to go and get Paul Groves' autograph for me when he was sitting in a booth at the Grimsby Asda's because I was too shy.

So, Kidderminster this Saturday is where it all begins. And it's a good way for the new, improved, super deluxe #wegoagain Windows 10 this-time-more-than-any-other-time GTFC to kick off the new season. They're not the toughest test Town will face in 2015-16, but they're a decent club which, even in its frequent spells of financial adversity, has always seemed able to field a team to cause Town trouble. Apart from that time we were both in the fourth division and Youssou Diop had a barney with his physio. That was a right laugh, that was.

That strong support that's the envy of many a club? Right here. Kidderminster manager Gary Whild is calling on his club's fans to be more like their Grimsby counterparts. In terms of turning up in great numbers and vocally encouraging their players, I mean, not smashing up medium-sized towns in the midlands and asphyxiating small children with smoke bombs. "Grimsby are likely to arrive at Aggborough with a big following," says Whild, "and that's where we need our supporters to come and back the lads because that can play a big part." Let's do this thing.