Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 17 July 2007

17 July 2007

Former Mariners full-back and estate agent Gary Croft knows all about relocation, relocation, relocation. After leaving Blundell Park in 1995 for a then record fee of £1.7m the player found it difficult to settle at Blackburn, where he started only 33 league games in more than three years, and finally moved on to Ipswich. The transfer market again treated him less kindly than the property market, though, and Crofty was restricted by injury and electronic tagging devices to just 20 league starts in nearly three seasons in Suffolk. Loan moves to Wigan and Cardiff followed, the latter becoming permanent - for three years, at any rate, before he returned in 2005 to flog posh seaside flats in boomtown Cleethorpes and play some more football for Grimsby Town. This summer he was off again, checking out potential former brewery building conversions during a kickabout with Burton Albion, but could now be staying in the local market after all thanks to a trial with Town's fourth division counterparts Lincoln City. "Hopefully I won't get a rough reception from the fans because of my Grimsby connections!" Crofty tells the Grimsby Telegraph, immediately after reminding them about their play-off semi-final defeat by the Mariners in 2006.

Elsewhere the Telegraph continues to believe it can succeed where two previous petitions failed. Providing further proof that the monarchy must be abolished immediately, her very lowness Queen Elizabeth II has refused to dub former Mariners full-back Sir John McDermott a member of the British Empire, despite literally dozens of Town fans signing a couple of petitions to that effect. Desperate to restore the credibility of the British throne, the local paper's aristocratic sports desk began a third such campaign earlier this month and is promoting it again this week, boasting modestly: "The Telegraph's online petition has now topped the 350 mark." As if this paltry total were not cause enough to give the whole thing up as a bad job, some of the messages of support sent by fans seem to be anything but. "An MBE is more than he deserves," comments one unkind Mariners devotee; with supporters like that, who needs enemies?

So much for the Telegraph; what's new today on Town's superb new official website? The OS is reporting that you can get 20/1 on the Mariners to storm to the fourth division title next season! The really exciting thing is that the odds are exactly the same as they were last time Town's superb new official website reported that you can get 20/1 on the Mariners to storm to the fourth division title next season - which was last Thursday. The Diary has a distinct impression that they reported the same odds at the end of May as well, when the bookies first published them, but I can't check because the news archive on Town's superb new official website is completely fucked up and throws up error messages when you select a week to view the headlines from. So yeah - 20/1, apparently.

And finally, a side essentially comprising the Myspace Mariners lost 2-1 in a friendly at Winterton Rangers last night. "A trialist" was the scorer for GTFC, reports Town's superb new official website helpfully.