Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 22 September 2005

22 September 2005

From the sublime, as they say, to the reserves at Scarborough. More than usually overshadowed by the deeds of their first-team counterparts, Town's second string travelled up the coast to the Bowl of Chips last night, where Danny North's tremendous free kick equalised a sixth-minute strike from the home side but a header and a penalty from Jimmy Beadle and Ashley Lyth respectively completed a 3-1 victory for Scarborough. Booo, Slades out. The Mariners' line-up included a 19-year-old Sunderland midfielder called Niall Flynn who, if he weren't on trial at Blundell Park, sounds for all the world like he'd be opening two new theme pubs a week, drawing shamrocks in the heads of pints of Guinness, and playing traditional folk jigs on the shillelagh.

Internet-savvy Town fans are all used to discovering, somewhere or other, at least one reference per week to a football club called "Grimbsy", but the media interest aroused by Tuesday's triumphant triumph over Tottenham has raised the usual inaccurate coverage of their club to the power of loads. Both the Sun and the BBC have remarked that the Mariners are only now on the back of successive relegations; large sections of the UK persist in the belief that Grimsby belongs to a county called Humberside, or Yorkshire; and there are, unsurprisingly, Premiership fans who don't know the name of the non-Premiership football ground where they have just been to watch a match. And don't get the Diary started on the Sky commentary team. As if all of the above were not bad enough, even our very own Grimsby Telegraph has taken Spurs' 18-year-old Leeds-born substitute Aaron Lennon and turned him into a thirtysomething Celtic midfielder with ginger hair and 39 caps for Northern Ireland.

Chris Jenkin, thank you for probably averting a war. The world needs picky bastards.

"I'm desperate for a match report on Tuesday's historic win over Spurs," writes aristocratic Diary reader, landowner and racehorse trainer Felix Oliver-Tasker. "All I get is poncy reports in the Grouniad [sic.] and the Daily Fascist. I know you guys had a few jars after the match but it is Thursday and the hangovers must be receding by now. Bring a little joy into the Clap Clinic at RBH and stir Tony Butcher into action please." Thankyou for your email, Felix. The Diary happens to know that TB is working frantically at this very moment on his account of Tuesday night's extravaganza, so it should be up on the site at some point this very afternoon; and I'd better clarify that, notwithstanding the imbibing habits of the rest of the CA team, Tony won't have touched a drop. That's how he remembers everything, you see. Never mind that, anyway - do you ever get any footballers in this Clap Clinic...?

That's your regular Diary done for this working week, then, so I will bid you all good day before leaving you in the hands of one of Cod Almighty's almighty team of guest diarists for tomorrow. A nice glass of orange juice with my lunch, I think.