Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 14 October 2008

14 October 2008

It's not often that Town are bracketed together with Tottenham, except when we're knocking them out of the League Cup, but just now the media seem particularly keen to report that Spurs and the Mariners are the only two senior English teams without a win this season. Recently every time the Diary has looked at Ceefax - which pisses all over the glacially slow digital press-the-red-button version of teletext, incidentally - another few decades have been added to Tottenham's worst-start-to-a-season-since-19xx statistic. But today the Grimsby Telegraph has been doing some book-bothering of its own and thoroughly deflated last week's euphoria over the appointment of Mike Newell with the gloomy claim that Town's "winless start to the 2008/9 league campaign is now their worst ever". Ace GTFC historian Rob Briggs is enlisted to confirm a second unhappy fact: that a failure to take three points from this weekend's visit to Exeter would mean Town equal the club's longest ever winless run in the league, established in 1981-82 when George Kerr's side went 18 games in the second division without claiming two points. Boooo, Newells out, etc etc and so on.

In times of grief the thoughts of Town fans often turn, in the hope of a brighter tomorrow, to the fortunes of the youth team. While Liam Nimmo, Iain Ward and Chris Bolder did not go on to enjoy long and successful careers in the Mariners' first XI, the picture has become a little brighter now that Ryan Bennett has emerged brilliantly and Danny North and Straight Peter Bore might do likewise if they can get their heads right. The latest triumph for the Myspace Mariners is a win on penalties against their north bank counterparts at nouveau riche King$ton Communication$ FC. Thanks to an excellent report on the KCFC site, we know that the two sides ended the football part of their first round Youth Alliance League Cup match level at 1-1, and that Town took the tie 8-7 on the shoot-out part. A second-round tie away at Scunthorpe on 22 November gives the lads a chance of exercising more local bragging rights on their social networking sites of choice.

Grimsby Town Supporters Trust is inviting fans to submit questions for a forthcoming interview with new manager Mike Newell and club chairman Deadly John (Con). The event will take place on Monday 20 October and the GTST website explains the various ways in which supporters can send in the queries they'd like to put to the two. Trust chairman Dave Otter will pose the questions to DJ(C) and Newell; Mariners World will carry footage of the interview afterwards; the trust will publish a transcript on its website at a later date; and nobody will be any the wiser about what's happening with the Fentydome.