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Diary - Thursday 23 April 2009

23 April 2009

Much could be made of Town's triumph in the Youth Alliance Cup earlier this week. Certainly the young players involved deserve every word of the copious congratulations they've been receiving since their heroic fightback from behind to lift the trophy at the home of their well-heeled opponents Queens Park Rangers. At the same time, though, Grimsby fans of a sceptical bent (sorry - tautology) will be mindful that youth teams tend to be praised constantly by their coaches and the local press alike, presumably out of a wish not to discourage them or undermine their undeveloped sense of self-worth, and that many generations of young Mariners before the current crop have been hyped up by the Grimsby Telegraph and Neil Woods into some sort of hybrid of Portugal's 'Golden Generation' and the Man Yoo side when Giggs, Scholes and Beckham all came through. In particular, it's noteworthy that of the 16 Town players on duty at the 2006 Midland Youth Cup final victory, most have moved on to clubs such as Louth United, Winterton Rangers and Lincs International Shipping FC, with only four seemingly still at Blundell Park - and Matty Bird may still have much to offer but North, Taylor and Straight Peter Bore have moved backwards this season. So without detracting in any way from the admirable performances and progress of Josh Fuller, Kiel Thompson, Danny Freeman and their teammates, let's just leave them to it for now and see how they go on.

Perhaps aware that the predecessors of the 2009 vintage have not notably surged through into the first team and saved the club's bacon, then, the GTFC youth coaching personnel are refusing to get too carried away with this week's great win. Neil Woods has given an interview to the Telewag which ostensibly celebrates the win but carries a cautious undertone. "I had a text off all the School of Excellence coaches straight after the game," he says. Fair enough.

Speaking of our local rag, did anyone notice this sorry-arsed excuse for a story the other day? Years ago, when some of the CA team were involved in starting up the Electronic Fishcake, which later became The Fishy, we introduced a section called 'Mentioned!', which tracked mostly derogatory references to Grimsby in the national media with a sort of tongue-in-cheek excitement. Northcliffe Media, which owns the Grimsby Telegraph, is sacking thousands of journalists despite recording profits of £64million in 2008, and the result is a newspaper that runs stories on the same flimsy premise of 'Mentioned!' but without the irony. And as much as the Telegraph urges us to take pride in our hometown, it is the abject nature of articles like this that does more than anything to reinforce the image of us as a bunch of slack-jawed hicks who are pathetically grateful for any kind of acknowledgement from the outside world and feel dizzy when they think about anything further than half a mile from their own front door. Wait - what do you mean the image is true?

The Diary is growing reluctant to continue reporting scandalous stories concerning Chester, so commonplace have they become - but it's a laugh, so here goes. Maybe it's the FA who should feel ashamed, though, at the news that Deviants midfielder Jay Harris, along with his co-accused in the Accrington/Chester betting scandal, is being given more time to enter a plea. The five alleged dirty cheating sods were supposed to respond to FA charges by today, but they haven't, so the FA has sort of said, oh, alright then, have another two weeks, just to make things a bit easier for your clubs. So that's nice then. Unless you're a rival club who's done nothing wrong. And meanwhile, Harris's teammate Damien Mozika has been suspended by the club for unspecified breaches of discipline like refusing to play despite being judged fit by the physio. Again, one would like to think the scandal will shake the Deviants to their core as a prelude to Aldershot grinding them into the dust in 48 hours' time - but our caution about the betting scandal having a similar effect on Accrington the other week proved sadly justified, didn't it. Look out for them timewasting tactics, Shots!