Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 29 January 2004

29 January 2004

Town officials are still making optimistic noises about this Saturday's encounter with Bristol City, but with the possibility of the team taking a point from the game being a distant one the club is contenting itself simply with the match going ahead. "At the moment we're quite confident," groundsman Mike Phillips tells today's Grimsby Telegraph. "We'll take the snow off tomorrow and the forecast for Saturday is for rain. That will help it thaw." With all outdoor pitches in the area also blanketed in snow, the squad is today using condoms, broken glass and dog poo instead of cones by training on Cleethorpes beach.

Premiership clubs may have voted themselves a mid-winter break as of next season so that they can sod off to play lucrative friendlies in the Far East, but you wouldn't catch Paul Groves buying any of that nonsense. The Mariners player-boss (for the time being) has been telling BBC Humber Sport of the benefits to mental and spiritual well-being bestowed by his side's recent lay-off - "It allows people to take a bit of a break from it and hopefully recharge the batteries and go again" - and apparently even Stuart Campbell and Darren Barnard may be fit to face the Bristolians this weekend. Hey, maybe Town should get knocked out of the FA Cup at an embarrassingly early stage every year! Oh...

There's not a lot else to report, bar a couple of 'former Mariner' stories. Wayne Burnett's professional comeback has been KO'd after Peterborough's shirt sponsor Van Asten Logistics slid into receivership. What do 'logistics' firms actually do, anyway? Steve Livingstone has decided to retire, and wishes he'd gone to play for Alan Buckley at Rochdale instead of chasing the glory and riches at Carlisle. I would write a lengthy tribute to him, but I'm trying to get today's Diary done as quickly as possible because of severe back pain - which I'm sure is something Livvo would understand.

No less mighty a figure than Tony Butcher has emailed the Diary overnight with an explanation for the Grimsby Telegraph's oxymoronic assertion that Alan Pouton "enjoyed a miserable Gillingham debut" last weekend. "Pouton has been in Grimsby so long the local psychology (or psychopathy) has been infused into his very core," explains CA's match reporter supreme. "To be miserable is to be happy. Having just got round to picking up the Sports Telegraph and reading 'The Town Debate' I give one more example. A Mr B D Jenkin (a regular attender at Blundell Park since 1965) returned for the Oldham and Plymouth games after a couple years off due to 'over commercialisation'." At Blundell Park? Are you sure? "He 'witnessed effort, skill, drama amd players who are a credit to their profession in a brilliant atmosphere' and intended to watch every other home game, work permitting. 'Not now I'm not!' Talk about fickle - I nominate him as the personification of Town support. Unless you know better?" Hey, didn't they used to say that on That's Life at the end of 'consumer' features about dodgy plumbers who'd set up pyramid selling schemes?

But yeah - readers! Send the Diary the worst examples of miserable fickle sods you can find on the Telegraph letters page, and we'll parade them here for the scorn and mockery of real fans! The new email address is diary@codalmighty.com.

To conclude today's proceedings we have an email from "scott", with the subject line "A excite game" and a little poem in the body text:

Hello,This is a excite game
This game is my first work.
You're the first player.
I expect you would enjoy it.

Well, I assume it's a poem, as there's no sign of a game anywhere. At the same time, it's sort of reassuring that even mail viruses sometimes forget to add the attachment.