Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 15 June 2007

15 June 2007

Your Guest Diarist spent part of this morning wading through a stultifying interview with Town assistant manager Stuart Watkiss, who was forced to remind the interviewer at one point that Town have to play everyone twice. It's Football League rules, you know. Mercifully for you, gentle reader, the Grimsby Telegraph has printed a condensed version of the interview so you do not have to be quite so stultified unless you really want full-on stultification this rainy Friday. So we have to play the good teams at home and away, and we have to play the other teams home and away as well. Except we are not really sure whom the good teams are yet. So will Lincoln and Wycombe still be play-off merchants? And will Peterborough's money buy them owt that will get them up there? And will Hereford and Shrewsbury still be hard to beat? And what of the relegated clubs? And what of those promoted in to the league? Not a flippin' clue really. So I had a look at a bookmaking site, although my betting days are long in the past, and this one shows how Coral think it will pan out. The bottom six look more likely than the top six in my view, but it's nice to see Town in mid-table obscurity with 6/1 available for them to finish in the top three. A sporting bet, eh?

But now it's time to listen to Lord Buckley. So hang on a mo, gentle reader.

So now I know. Lord Buckley, in mellow mood, is looking to do better than last season. He feels he has two keepers now who can genuinely compete for the first team. And if he had to pick his first team today it would be Barnes in goal - simply because he played well at the end of last season. Yes he did. As for strikers, well, there is no-one close to being signed and Lord Buckley rapidly turned the conversation back to whom we have already got. He feels that if Rankin showed the desire of Danny North he would be in the team, explaining that he is planning to have a little chat with our Isaiaiaiah on his return from holiday. So we may end up with Jones, North and Rankin as the first-choice strikers next season. This will depend, one suspects, on how fit Rankin is after the first two weeks of the pre-season. So there is no need to panic at the moment - and that's an official platitude from the great man himself.

The official site has released photographs of notorious Grimsby heterosexual Peter Bore wearing the new Town away shirt. Relatively inoffensive, and like, well like a blue footy shirt really. The only other news worth mentioning is the David Burns Look North fiasco. Peter Levy and Mr Burns are unlikely bedfellows, but ended up together on the sofa discussing football. Yes, this is car crash TV alright. It followed a nice little film showing Scunny expanding their snack shack and shyly admitting they'd spent thirty grand on the pitch as they ready themselves for life in division two next season. As for the Mariners, well, all the talk was of the 'new anthem' to be sung to the tune of Jerusalem. The lyrics perhaps need a little work, but it's a nice tune. Burns sniggered, Peter couldn't wait to tell us (again) how grateful he was that we were watching him. And then it was Celebrity Masterchef, going LOUD. Christ, life sucks when you end up slumped on the settee watching shit like this. See yer.