Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 21 March 2008

21 March 2008

Your Guest Diarist is not of the christian persuasion and thus good friday (no caps please editor - I've already had to physically wrestle microsoft flipping word in order to take them off, and it has still left an angry looking red squiggly line under the twin blasphemies of refusing to capitalise a christian holiday and the name of the fools who wrote this bloatware) is the most pointless day of the year. No football and too cold to consider doing much of owt in the garden; it really is a long good friday.

Tomorrow, though, we have Mansfield away. [Oh, are you sure that's not 'mansfield'? - ed.] A Mansfield who appear to be playing better under a caretaker manager who delights in the name Dutch Holland. Well, it's better than Harry Wales, I suppose. Mr Holland reckons they have been sharp in training and is relishing the prospect of two more games in charge over the bank holidays. Town, meanwhile, continue to welcome players back in to training from injury. Toner has trained all week and Danny North trained on Thursday, the superb new official site tells us. Lord Buckley hasn't had time to have a chat with Dale this week (or vice versa, possibly) but did rattle out a quick interview with the Telegraph in which he revealed that it is hard to know who to play and who to rest. That's what we trust and pay you for, Alan, but just make sure you play Butler while he is in the goalscoring mood - too long on the bench might do his back no good at all.

The lack of injuries and suspensions is quite scary actually. With Rotherham being pushed down the table (and, by the way, I for one am glad that it looks like a rescue package is happening for them), Town's money worries being eased a bit by the Wembley thing and the aforementioned full-squad-available situation, maybe that imaginary friend in the sky is giving us a bit of help here and there after all? I'll set my religious compass back to agnostic, shall I?

You are not getting a lot more today, folks, because I have promised Cod Almighty T-shirt man that I will help him pack up 300 assorted CA T-shirts to post out of the weekend. Yes, the promised delivery arrived yesterday, and very snazzy the anti-franchise ones look too. Sadly the Wombles' mascot has been prohibited from wearing one because of the draconian conditions imposed on AFC Wimbledon when they managed to get their own club history back from the BFS, but their home match against Horsham next Saturday will be awash with anti-Franchise shirts and general bonhomie towards Grimsby Town fans. So if you are in London at the weekend, why not go along and 'release the peace' with a Womble or two, especially if you have tales of Harry Haddock and the like.

The T-shirt man has had offers of seventeen free pints and two proposals of marriage from Wombles so far, he tells me. After the former there may be a danger of accepting the latter, of course. He says there is still time to order T-shirts for Wembley, but Sunday is the absolute last day and even then it depends on the postal service delivering a small first class parcel within four Earth days. Anyway, that's your lot - let's hope we beat the Stags and no-one gets injured or sent off. See yer.