Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 23 July 2007

23 July 2007

"Town have given Macca a job at their academy!" read a text message sent to the Diary by a fellow GTFC fan yesterday, as I tried to sleep off the effects of Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Farsley Celtic. "Great news!" I replied, and put my head back on the pillow. "Hang on," added the Diary in another text message when I woke up again three hours later, "Town haven't got an academy!" So what was going on? Sir John McDermott had been granted employment as a youth football coach by the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, which seems to be what the college at Nuns Corner is called this week, that's what. And why the confusion? It was all down to the BBC, which had not so much got the wrong end of the stick as clutched a different stick entirely in reporting that Town's former record-breaking right-back had landed a post with the club's non-existent academy, shortly before the Queen stormed out of the room in response to questions about her failure to award Macca an MBE and the availability of her crown for use as a goalpost.

As for Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Farsley Celtic, the Diary took one look at the match report on Town's superb new official website and ran out to get trashed on cheap cider and fall unconscious under the nearest emergency services vehicle. Defeat in insignificant pre-season friendlies the Diary can cope with; defeat for an Alan Buckley side that fails to create a goal from its overwhelming share of possession is almost to be expected; but beginning to read a match report and finding three different verb tenses in the first two sentences is more than any sane human being can be expected to cope with.

So what does Lord Bucko need to do? Sign some players, possibly - though the Town boss has never been one for snapping up half a dozen journeymen the moment the final whistle blows at the end of the season. That way lies madness and Gary Harkins, though the Mariners have managed to offload their misfit midfielder to Partick Thistle, where he had been training for a couple of weeks with a view to getting back to his roots. Harkins was speedily signed up by former GTFC manager Grahams Rodgerses early last summer but never quite found the pulse of the 20-odd games he subsequently featured in. The arrival of James Hunt on loan in January cast doubts over his future at Blundell Park, and when Hunt was prevented from playing against his parent club Bristol Rovers, Harkins' fate seemed sealed by an awful stand-in performance that saw him subbed off after less than half an hour with Town two goals down. Still, he tried a bit, which is more than can be said for some, and even as GTFC cancel his contract to allow his free transfer to Partick, Harkins will not leave without some goodwill, I reckon.

Guest Diary has emailed, further to his ponderings last Friday about the ten players selected by Mariners officials for the PFA vote to find Town's best player ever. "The most controversial omission is probably Clive Mendonca," he wrote at the time, and adds now: "When I wrote that on Friday I had forgotten that Super Clive won a previous poll," referring to the Football Focus 'cult heroes' thingy two or three years ago. Good point, but it could all be academic anyway. The Diary would be interested to learn how many people actually end up voting, given that the only way to do so is by text message, that users of one mobile network are excluded, that no indication is given as to the cost of voting, that the vote is already buried away deep in the Grimsby Telegraph's site, and that I can't find anything about it at all on the club's superb new official website. See you tomorrow!