Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Monday 1 June 2009
1 June 2009
You've all seen The Damned United by now, right? In which the almighty Brian Clough is forced to kneel and beg Peter Taylor to come back and work with him again in a touching, funny and really quite homoerotic scene towards the end of the film? The popularity of this fictionalised account of Clough's career, in both its recent film version and David Peace's novel The Damned Utd, has reminded us all of the importance of the assistant manager - and Brian Stein seems positioned as the Taylor to Mike Newell's Clough in today's Grimsby Telegraph. Ten years or so Newell's senior, Stein aims to revisit the huge success achieved by the duo at Luton, and the Town boss can be found bigging up his number two in the local paper as we speak. "He's also not one of those people that will just agree with everything that I say, which is important. There is no middle ground with him. It's either 'yes, you're right' or 'no, you can't do that' and that's good for me as the manager," says our Mike. "You are a bloody disgrace! Hey, Baz! For missing the target from there you want bloody shooting!"
Pointless football website Teamtalk, meanwhile, has finally cottoned on to Stein's appointment as Newell's number two. This, you will doubtless recall, was announced by Grimsby Town Football Club at 7:42am on Saturday 9 May - three weeks, two days, three hours and 53 minutes before Teamtalk caught up and its story finally appeared, like one of those emails which mysteriously circle in the ether for ages and ages and then you finally get them and read them and have a really gormless look on your face for a few seconds as you stare at the text in absolute perplexity before you realise it's from ages and ages ago. A gentle round of applause for Teamtalk, please, readers.
The Diary, as you know, seeks to be constructively critical of Town's PR and communications staff, offering gently humorous and affectionate commentary on all their many monumental fuck-ups in the hope that those responsible might acknowledge the room for improvement and resolve to really earn the wages that the supporters pay them. With their latest mistake, however - sending out season ticket renewal forms which don't actually give the date on which season tickets finally become available - those self-same comms staff have held their hands up and admitted their fault, and so it is unnecessary for the Diary to add further comment. This didn't stop Paddy Grant emailing, though, to remark that "either a serious criminal incident occurred today at BP or with no news in the pipeline the OS has gone into hyperbole overdrive". Nice to see the comms team accepting responsibility, anyway. They've even gone to the trouble of translating one page of the superb new official website into English from the original version's ("Guarantees you a place at every league match in the area of Matchday Prices the ground of your choice") gibberish. Keep it up, folks!
Next there's an email from David Elvidge, who offers greetings "from sunny Huny (i.e. Hunstanton)". David emails on the subject of, funnily enough, The Damned United: "Saw it last night at King's Lynn Arts Centre and thought it was damned good (geddit?). Only reason for mentioning it is that it brought back memories of a trip from Grimsby to the Baseball Ground at Derby on a Lambretta scooter." Crumbs! "An appropriate opportunity to thank the Diary for its daily reports throughout the traumatic season just ended. Well done," adds David. Not at all - thanks for reading! Have any other Diary readers travelled to away games on a Lambretta? Email diary@codalmighty.com and tell us!
Lastly today, former Cod Almighty contributor Andy 'Statman' Holt, now resident in sunny Christchurch, New Zealand, is back in the UK later this month and has a small gap in his busy schedule. "Where's good to visit if we're leaving Coventry mid-morning and getting Derby by 4pm?" he wonders. I reckon Leicester's awesome National Space Centre but drop an email the Diary's way if you have any other suggestions. Cheers!