Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 21 June 2006

21 June 2006

Those who believe Andy Parkinson has never scored enough goals at Blundell Park are sure to be proved wrong next season when the jug-eared winger returns to Cleethorpes with his new club Notts County and puts four past the hapless replacement for Steve Mildenhall. GTFC aren't saying whether Parky was offered terms to stay but turned them down to become a Pie, or might later have been offered terms to stay but Graham Rodgerses didn't get round to it before he went on holiday, or was never ever going to be offered terms to stay, like not even if we were being eaten by wild dogs. Whichever is the case, the player has become one of several in recent years to swap one set of black and white stripes for another, with Mike Edwards preceding his journey from BP to Meadow Lane and the splendid Paul Bolland having made it in reverse last summer. Some of the pint-sized scamperer's 13 goals for the Mariners were lovely things to watch, but even as his spell with the club drew to a close with three excellent performances in the fourth division play-offs, Town fans remained divided between those who found Andy Parkinson bloody infuriating and those who found him really bloody infuriating.

If the spills of Town's 2005-06 campaign took place at Sincil Bank and the Millennium Stadium, the thrills mainly occurred in the League Cup, where the War of Shearer's Lip was of course preceded by two dead good wins over Tottenham and Scab Derby. Reason I mention this, of course, is partly because it was a lot of fun and partly because the draw for the first round of next season's competition has been made already, and the Mariners have been given a home tie against Crewe, who have just been relegated from the second to the third division, but whose fans aren't having a massive strop and shouting "boooo, Gradis out" and stuff, strangely enough. The match "is likely to be played", reports the official site, on Tuesday 22 August, unless it gets moved to a Friday.

Season ticket holders will be spending the week sifting through the plethora of forms and flyers that constitute the renewal pack - unless they've been unnaturally keen and done it all already. A comparison table in the pack tells us that Town's prices will still be among the cheapest in next season's fourth division, undercut by only a handful of clubs such as Macclesfield Town, Darlington, Rochdale and "Stockpoty County". The covering letter from the club chairman goes on to announce a sponsorship deal with a brewery described by Mr Fenty as "an exciting new venture". It is surely to the benefit of the club that the chairman gets such a big kick out of these things, but if Blundell Park selling a slightly different kind of rubbish lager next season counts as exciting then the Diary fears for the health of John's heart should he ever go waterskiing or skydiving or something.

Among the Diary readers who sent despairing emails this way during Cod Almighty's recent downtime was Nick Meaney. "Like other fans, you may be suffering from a Mildenhall-departure-inspired breakdown," he wrote. "Quite understandable. I hope it's fixed soon. I miss it." Thank you Nick; I hope you feel better now. Perhaps inevitably, meanwhile, it is Dan Humphrey who has taken up the challenge of naming all the players at the World Cup who have played against Town. Unlike Paul Robinson, Dan makes a reasonable fist of it, producing 29 names - although a number of these are speculative, and the Diary is fairly sure John 'The Statue' Terry and Frank 'Super Goals' Lampard have never been tested by the likes of Jonny Rowan and Des Hamilton. Tony Butcher's pick of 37 players remains the benchmark: can anyone pick him up on anything?

Lastly today, Mike Harrison has emailed again with "a further thought on the Rodger/Rodgers saga. Our man could be hoping to emulate the great deeds of his illustrious American relative Roy. Not only would he have a choice of ready-made assistants - Dale Evans, Trigger and Bullet the alsatian - he could serenade the supporters over the Blundell Park High Power Disco Speaker System. That should bring back the thousands of missing fans." Thanks, Mike. Any more for any more, or do we need to move on now?