Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 22 February 2006

22 February 2006

This afternoon at Lincoln, Town's reserve side continues its epic quest for a first win of the season (but would probably settle for a third draw), and the club's official website has named the, er, 17 players on duty, unless "Jackson Shahin" is one person and the site is using his first name Jackson to distinguish him from all the other Shahins in the squad. The Imps have taken Eastwood Town striker Adie Francis on trial and will give him a chance this afternoon to double his season's tally of three goals in 27 appearances. Eastwood is also, of course, the club for which young Mariners Miles Chamberlain and Alan Lamb have recently been playing on loan, so it is surprising to see Chamberlain's name listed in Town's squad for the match, unless he's sneaking out of Nottinghamshire and leaving a central defender-shaped pillow under his duvet to fool his landlady. Equally, the Diary is excited to see the names "Would, Rock" included in the GTFC line-up, and calls upon Neil Woods to play a couple of likely lads either side of them named "That" and "Dude".

Clearly fed up with this week's dearth of GTFC news, the Grimsby Telegraph leads today's sport section with a piece about the injury situation at Blundell Park, and how it isn't really any clearer than it was a few days ago whether Town's walking knackered will be fit to return to the side when Chester hit Meggies this Saturday. "We'll just have to see how both of those players are doing as the week progresses," recites Mr Russell Slade on the riveting subject of Justin Whittle's knee and Marc Goodfellow's thigh. Sir John McDermott's sciatica and Gary Croft's suspension, meanwhile, could leave the Mariners having to play Tom Newey at both left-back and right-back. "He's a versatile young lad who should have no trouble slotting into both roles, since he usually stands on the penalty spot when he should be at left-back," Slade might have added, but didn't.

Mark Wilson may have been the first reader ever to email the Diary, way back in the early days of Cod Almighty, when we only had six readers, so it's nice to still be hearing from him today, now that we've got nine. "If Chester don't have a nickname maybe we should help them out with suggestions," writes Mark in response to an aside in yesterday's Diary. "I'll start with 'the Deviants'." I like that. In fact I like it too much. It sounds like a punk band, and is therefore far too cool for Chester.

Finally today, go back to that page on the OS about Town's reserves, and look at the top headline and picture under the 'TV News' section. That's really harsh. The poor lad has improved no end since he recovered from that shin splints thing.