Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 26 July 2007

26 July 2007

Ever since the Mariners dropped out of the top two divisions in 2003, the club has still fancied itself a cut above most of the riff-raff down here. On the opening day of the '03-04 season Town showed the rest of those ten-bob third division outfits they meant business by chartering an AEROPLANE! To FLY to their away fixture at Plymouth! OK, so a few weeks later Town were losing 8-1 at Hartlepool and averaging among the lowest home attendances in the division, ending that season with a second successive relegation, but it didn't matter. They sent a message. And once they were down in the bottom division they continued to send the same message: we're better than you and we don't belong here. How? Not by getting promoted, clearly, but by spending LOADS OF MONEY ON AGENTS. How much is loads much? In the second half of 2006 it was £21,000 - more than £800 a week. But with the club now mired in its longest ever period of fourth division football, and Lord Alan Buckley back at the helm, perspective and good sense have prevailed at last, and GTFC fans can sleep easy tonight in the knowledge that in the first half of 2007 NONE of their hard-earned was frittered on the men with eight mobiles and marrow-sized cigars. Stitch that, Sam Allardyce! Or something.

And you can tell from the way the Grimsby Telegraph is reheating a story that's about four days old that there's nothing much else to tell you today. Various sources, including the club's superb new official website, are headlining stories to the effect that Positive John Fenty is fucking overjoyed at the mouldy crumbs spilt on Blundell Park from the Premiership table earlier this week, only to then quote the Mariners supremo as saying our £23,000 a year from the top flight's insane new £2.7bn TV deal is worth diddly squat. So I don't bloody know what he's saying, really - do you? Is the pub open yet? Oh, there's an email from Eddie C about the thing in the Guardian the other day saying Town are the second biggest losers ever. "Why do I put myself through it?" he asks. "I even went to Torquay away! My friend says I'm a jinx, cos whenever I go to an away game we lose, so these stats just prove it's not my special jinx powers but Town's shiteness over the years since the late 1800s." A wonderful message of hope for us all there, I'm sure you'll agree. Cheers Eddie! And thanks to you all for reading; I'll see you next week.