Cod Almighty | Diary

I'm a sentimental fool but I don't care

30 July 2018

It's all shaping up quite well, then, isn't it? As you will have seen, Town crashed their way to supremacy in the battle of the GTFCs on Saturday by the emphatic margin of four goals to none, and The Jolley seems happy enough with the world. And such is the level of The Jolley's stock with Mariners fans right now that if he seems happy enough with the world, we will put our questions aside and just see what happens.

Questions? Well, you know, like who's going to play left wing-back when we kick off against Forest Green in five days' time? And if Reece Hall-Johnson does it, who's going to play up the right? Will that ultimately be the best thing for Harry Clifton? Does the fact that Max Wright hasn't had much of a run-out mean he's further from the first-team reckoning than we thought? Does the fact that we're playing wing-backs mean there isn't a clear role for him there anyway in the immediate future? With half as many matches as usual this pre-season, have they all had enough minutes? Do we still need another striker? And what colour shall we paint our back door?

Like everyone else, your original/regular Diary is happy to trust the manager's judgement on all that, with the possible exception of the back door, although such is the level of The Jolley's stock etc etc and so on that if he said surgical appliance pink I'd probably give him the benefit of the doubt on that as well.

The Grimsby Telegraph has teamed up with a number of other regional newspapers to run a charming survey of fourth division fans about who they hate the most. The tl;dr, as you would expect, is that the club geographically closest to our own comes out on top, because those are the instructions we are given about how to feel. The accuracy of these results will be less than scientific, of course, as there are plenty of fans who see the whole 'rivalry' narrative for the nonsense it is. Why waste your hate on a football club, after all, when there is talk of a new Coldplay album?

All of this is cheerfully framed as fun bantz, naturally: it's not actual hate, just the fun, pretend version that we use for football. And when the fun, pretend version of hate gets mixed up with the actual version, and there's a bit of a scuffle outside Sincil Bank when the time comes, the Telegraph will be right there to remind us where the line should be drawn.

Town's season ticket sales are up to about 2,900, according to the club, which I think is slightly down on last year. While the margin is probably not very significant, you still can't help wondering exactly how a team managed by Russell Slade is seemingly more attractive than one managed by Michael Jolley. But hey. Let's hope Jean Gell, in particular, enjoys her investment. Up the bleedin' Mariners!