Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Wednesday 1 November 2006
1 November 2006
With Isaiah Rankin regaining something approaching match fitness and Gary Cohen returning to the training ground, Town supporters have enjoyed nothing but good news this week, and last night's defeat in the Pot of Paint is no exception. With their side being ejected from the tournament courtesy of a 3-0 thrashing at Mansfield, Mariners fans will no longer have to endure match reports littered with puns about glossy performances, matt finishes or painting the Town red. "The fans deserve better than that level of spineless sub-Richard Whiteley wordplay, and after this sort of performance from the players they won't have to put up with it any longer," GTFC boss Grahams Rodgers might have said, if he'd been up for joining in the Diary's lame-ass attempt at making light of the situation. There are those who refuse to take the Pot of Paint seriously, of course, but Town supporters will never forget their brush with success in the 1998 competition.
Entirely predictably, the Mariners' official website performs no better than the players when it comes to last night's game. A disastrous match report on the OS (where the Town squad still has two number 12s: Richard Ravenhill and Ricky Ravenhill) begins by naming Andy Butler as responsible for the own goal that opened the scoring at Field Mill, then explains that "Hamshaw's corner was met by the head of Danny Boshell and the ball flew into the net". The paradoxes continue in the second half, when we discover that a substitution can somehow be made and not made at the same time. "The Mariners introduced Nick Hegarty on 67 minutes, replacing Kevin James," says the OS. "Gary Harkins came on for a limping Gary Croft on 72 minutes. That didn't happen and the home side continued to cause the Mariners problems." In a way the Diary can make sense of this, as my fondest wish is to discover that everything that has happened to GTFC from the play-off final onwards has been a sort of collective bad dream, and that we can breezily dismiss it all just by saying: "That didn't happen."
"Oh God. Can this get any worse?" begins an email to the Diary from Rich Mills, capturing the mood nicely. "I'm finding myself siding with the nay-sayers and other assorted whingers; maybe Town should get rid of Grezza before it's too late. Or maybe I should keep off those messageboards before my grammar and spelling go to pot..." Cheer up, Rich! The future is bright, as the Mariners' all-conquering youth team have proved. True, it's a shame that nobody at the club has been bothered to update their results page on the official website since 9 September, but the youngsters look more than capable of defending their Midland Floodlit Cup thing if this week's 6-1 win over Kidderminster is anything to go by. What's that? Andy Taylor's return to the youth team meaning Danny North had to play half the first-team game at Mansfield last night? There are those who refuse to take the Pot of Paint seriously, of course.