Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 23 May 2006
23 May 2006
The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls/And tenement halls/And whispered in the sound of silence. There is a small possibility that Paul Simon may not have had Grimsby Town Football Club in mind when he penned these lyrics, but never have they been more apposite than today, as a deafening hush holds sway over Blundell Park regarding the big announcement that was supposed to happen last night but didn't. The rumours were a-flyin' that Positive John Fenty had secured £9m of funding towards the Fentydome, Mr Russell Slade was to sign a new three-year contract or Young's was about to extend its sponsorship, but sources close to the Diary suggest that "well-known comedian Gary Marshall" turned up and couldn't get in because nobody knew who he was.
If somebody had told you at 5:00pm on 19 March 2005 that the referee in the game of football you had just watched would be placed in charge of your team's promotion play-off final at the end of the following season, you would most likely have hurled yourself off the top of the Smiths/Stones/Findus stand in despair at the apparent determination of Fate or the FA to smash into atoms any hopes you ever cherished of future life happiness. It's a good job you've had 14 months to calm down, really, because Paul Taylor - the man who was to quality refereeing what Carl Boyeson was to, um, quality refereeing - has been entrusted with officiating this Sunday's decade-deciding encounter with Cheltenham. In mitigation, he wasn't so bad against Northampton the other week - but was this merely the false sense of security-inducing lull before the storm of Town torment to follow, type thing? Time and your tears will tell.
What do this weekend's opponents make of us? In a really bad A-Z of Grimsby, the Gloucestershire Echo reports that GTFC sponsor Young's employs 29 per cent of the local population. Based on 2001 census figures for the number of people living in Grimsby and Cleethorpes combined, this would mean around 34,500 people toiling in the firm's local seafood processing works - but Young's's's website begs to differ, giving a figure of 3,000 for the combined workforce in its Grimsby and Hull factories. If the standards of journalistic research in Cheltenham are matched by the work of the local football club's scouts then we can look forward to the Mariners issuing them with a proper spanking come Sunday while the Robins' tallest defender man-marks Andy Parkinson.
Time for today's T-shirt news, and loads of the buggers were posted out yesterday, so if you've ordered one of the new designs, then it should be with you soon. Cod Almighty's fashionwear supremo Andy Holt has also asked the Diary to announce this. "If the T-shirt you want is not currently available in the size you require (M, L or XL), that is because it is out of stock. We will be ordering more stock, it just might be a while until we do. Due to new minimum order limits imposed by our printers we aren't able to place orders as and when we require. However, if you email us at tshirts@codalmighty.com and let us know what you want to order, we will email you back when we have more stock. Can't say fairer than that." Indeed. Do I get a free 'I heart GY' for that, Andy?
Later today, of course, we will learn the outcome of Gary Jones' appeal against that red card, and your most recent emails to the Diary have taken up this subject with relish. Bedders asks: "How about a T-shirt similar to the Glen Downey one, in tribute to the unlucky Lumpy one, reported with true Telegraphical skill: 'I was there when the Lump was sent off against Continued on Page 40'. Just a thought." Both Tony Butcher and Durham Diary, meanwhile, have emailed to ask whether Cod Almighty's payment of Jones' appeal fee can be made in instalments or needs to be settled with a Lump sum. They say great minds think alike, but it's not only great minds.