Cod Almighty | Diary
If it's Thursday it must be Boston
11 July 2019
July is truly a great time to be a football fan. The matches come thick and fast, and most of them are local derbies.
On Tuesday night, in case you missed it, James Hanson took his tally to four goals in two games when he opened the scoring at Grantham Town. A late goal from Mattie Pollock and an even later Ahkeem Rose penalty gave the Mariners a 3-1 win, after James Berrett had played a part in the Gingerbreads' equaliser, silencing the chants of "we piss on your biscuits, yes we do" which were no doubt ringing around the South Kesteven Stadium.
Last night, the youths beat Brigg at the Hawthorns. Two goals were scored by Joe Starbuck, the other by a trialist. Middle-Aged Diary wonders if football statisticians sometimes wake up in a cold sweat at the thought of an Adam Trialist making his way in the game one day.
Tonight, Town continue their tour of the southern parts of the county with a stop at Boston. United's assistant manager is John McDermott, a role he appears to combine with academy coach at Scunthorpe and football academy head coach at the Grimsby Institute of Higher Education. "I have a lot of good memories there," he says of his two decades at Blundell Park, "even if my focus is now on doing well with Boston. We hope they'll have a good season and they'll say the same to us. I always want all the Lincolnshire sides to do well – even Scunthorpe," he adds. No wonder: there probably isn't a club in the county he doesn't currently have a job with.
When Middle-Aged Diary was a kid, football in this country was losing its international standing, but there was still a certain cachet to being an English goalkeeper. If all McDermott's frenetic coaching is doing anything, there will surely be a time, perhaps a decade from now, when people will lower their voices and speak in awed tones of anyone who can claim to be "a Lincolnshire full-back".