Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 17 March 2005
17 March 2005
Supporters of Grimsby Town FC may not be the first group of candidates you would think of if a hippie recruiting officer asked you to enlist the children of the revolution, but you certainly won't fool them. It is because of this local scepticism - sometimes healthy, as in the case of Scott McGarvey; sometimes unhealthy, as in the case of, well, nearly everything and everyone else - that most Mariners fans who hear today's news that their club has taken Gambian defender Hassan Nyang on trial will have reacted by grumbling darkly that he won't feature in the next reserve game, and that the club won't even bother announcing when his trial comes to its inevitable fruitless conclusion just like all the others. The rest, by contrast, will probably remark that Nyang won't receive international clearance to play for the reserves, because the club probably doesn't know how to apply for it, and that even in the unlikely event that he turns out to be worth signing, he probably wouldn't qualify for a work permit anyway.
The Diary, of course, holds no truck with such fatalistic pessimism. Call me giddy with the joys of spring, but things can change if enough people want them to. Look what a mess Donny Rovers and Brighton were in not that long ago, and look where they are now: not only do they still exist, which at certain times looked far from assured; they are thriving comfortably higher up the divisions than GTFC. But there's always somebody worse off than you, and right now that means Cambridge, bottom of the league and skint, and some suit has sold their ground from under their feet. It is earnestly to be hoped that the poor buggers pull through, and for this reason I am letting you know, if you don't already, that the Us' home game against Wycombe this Saturday will be a Fans United event, with supporters of clubs from all over the place turning out to show solidarity and bring attention to Cambridge's plight. More informational-type material can be had at the Clubs in Crisis website and Cambridge Fans United.
My American-designed word processor hasn't put a red underline below the word 'informational'. This must mean the Americans think it's a real word. That's funny.
Diary readers are queueing up to offer advice on how to spend my evenings this week, and my American-designed word processor has put a red underline below the word 'queueing', which goes away if you change it to 'queuing'. This is just plain wrong. "Why even ask this stupid question when everyone knows you've got Football Manager 2005 installed on your PC?" asks Miles Moss. "Even if we suggest other things, the draw will be too strong. The attraction of the computer game, I mean - I've no idea about the strength of your current stash." I'm trying to think of a pun about scoring now, but my attention span is shot to death probably from smoking too much of... er... ooh, Pulp are on the radio.
Two Michaels have also stepped forward with suggestions. One is Michael Shelton, who says I should go for a walk with a plastic bag and some gardening gloves and pick up litter, because it will make me feel all karmic and glowy. I have to say at this point that Miles is winning. The other is Michael Patten, a Bristol City fan who has started visiting Cod Almighty after those ace write-ups we got in When Saturday Comes, and offers a link to one of those Scandinavian 'wallop the penguin as far as you can' games that were popular the other year and on which the scoring system and levels of gore and blood both seemed to increase exponentially on each subsequent version. It's more of a waste time at work thing than a play all night at home thing, I reckon, but ta anyway, like.
"From ad hoc visits to your noble site," adds Michael P, "I have deduced that (a) your match report correspondents are manic depressives; (b) cider always helps." Thanks mate. As a strong believer in the pleasantly numbing effects of pre-match drinking, I often wonder whether a bottle of the Rutland Arms' finest White Lightning might inject a welcome note of levity to Tony's reports. On the other hand, his abstinence is probably essential to his astonishing powers of recollection, and so a drop or two of cider might introduce a surprising note of brevity as well.
Finally, proof that utter stupidity in letters to the Grimsby Telegraph isn't confined to the subject of football. And this being Thursday, I bid you ta-ta for the week, tarrying only to inform you that the aforementioned Michael Shelton, aka Genius, lately of the University of Durham maths department, will, I understand, be making his debut as a guest diarist here tomorrow. So good luck to him, and I'm going off now to wonder why we are all supposed to celebrate the day of the patron saint of a completely random foreign country.