Cod Almighty | Diary

Beware patriotism, disillusionment usually follows

4 September 2025

Here I am again. Your Guest Diarist is a year older but no bloody wiser as I rose at 5-30 this morning. In the damn dark. Time to advance my inner alarm as we enter the thistledown fall. As it is my seventieth year to heaven I decided to follow Dylan's example and step out to travel through the still-sleeping town. Time to check my winter caulis and walk my ancient dog to beat the forecast rain. Autumn is arriving early ^again. Now that the Mariners have completed their mammoth August slog it is time for the team to step up - we don't need a routine soul-funk workout this September. We don't want to follow the Average Black and White band do we?

Weirdly, when the elation subsides after a great victory, I go downhill a bit. I stumbled across a word that describes this feeling - erfüllungsleere, fulfilment emptiness. The best remedy is to watch a performance full of verve and enthusiasm. The last two games were never going to give me that. Mentally hungover then screwed by an alarmingly poor refereeing decision. So let's draw a line under everything that's past and bust a gut to beat the BFS on Saturday.

It was wildly exciting to see that Grimsby Town featured in the latest threnodic ode from that obituary master E.J. Thribb. Not the first time that CA has featured the perennially teenaged poet.

Another year older, on the back of two awkward Town matches, the prospect of us next playing a team that should not exist and then, to cap it all, the prospect of watching a rag-tag England team take on Andorra. Tournament qualifying games against inadequate opponents with a half-baked bunch of over-paid disinterested players turning out. What I want from Town is the complete opposite - an integrated team, buzzing with enthusiasm playing progressive attacking football. I am much more optimistic about getting that from Grimsby Town than I am about England. See yer.