Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 31 July 2012

31 July 2012

Three relegations in less than a decade, and a string of doomed managers shipping players in and out before we could learn their names. Entertainment has been at a premium down Blundell Park way this past decade or so. Sure, there's been the odd moment of fun. There was... um... well, we'll get back to you on that. Oh yeah - that injured Kidderminster Harriers forward getting in a strop with his physio, so the physio walked away and left him to it, and the injured player had to hobble slowly and painfully on his own all the way round the edge of the pitch to the dug-outs, as gleeful mockery rained down from the stands throughout.

Another isolated moment of fun came last season, once Shorty and Shouty started to play Liam Hearn as an out-and-out centre-forward and the once-prolific former Alfreton Town and Quorn hotshot started banging them in for the Mariners. Specifically, it was the moment when Hearn was 'being linked with' a move to Chelsea. Nobody quite ascertained the source of this 'story'. But your original/regular Diary suspected it originated in the same school of journalism as the widespread reports in 2009 that England women's manager Hope Powell was 'being linked with' a move to Grimsby Town. (The latter, of course, stemmed from a Town fan whose identity is known to the Cod Almighty team starting a rumour on the internet just for a laugh.)

Hearn, anyroad, has belatedly begun pre-season training, putting paid to this summer's somewhat less entertaining rumour that he was being wrapped in cotton wool ahead of a transfer to European champions Sheffield United. Tonight's Lincolnshire Senior Cup final against Lincoln City "will probably come too soon", though, according to today's Grimbo Telewag. Hearn's calf/achilles problem has proved a frustration for the player, but been quite convenient for Shorty and Shouty. Had Hearn been in the team, their experiment with a 4-3-3 system would have been proven a failure far sooner, instead of having to be exposed ruthlessly by a heavily laboured victory over Barton Town Old Boys.

So what price a little more fun at Sincil Bank tonight? Six quid, since you ask, which it must be said compares favourably with the price of home friendlies recently. I remember when we saw Heart of Midlothian stepping out at BP one summer for no more than two or three English pounds. Mind you, I remember when all this were Fields of the Nephilim.

There's no word on whether Simon Ford will get another bite of his trial cherry this evening. The FORMER Mariners centre-half and space academy graduate was on trial, as we know, when Barton ran in two easy goals against Town at the weekend. But whether that's going any further, who knows? Lincoln manager David Holdsworth has apparently talked of fielding a youth or under-21 side (which the Shorty manager "didn't know they had"). This could be a case of getting in your excuses early, or simply a way of excluding Rob Duffy and Straight Peter Bore from the Imps' line-up. If the two ex-Townites do play, then the Immutable Law of the Ex guarantees a goal from at least one of them. But GTFC will take a few hundred fans down the road to abuse them both. Well, you have to make your own fun when entertainment's so thin on the ground.