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Diary - Thursday 7 May 2009

7 May 2009

"Is Forbes in MN's plans?" asks the headline bit on a Mariners World interview with Adrian Forbes today. The on-loan striker, speaking after last Saturday's warm-down against Macclesfield, speaks very warmly of his time with Town - "It's been enjoyable; the fans have been superb; the management and the lads have been brilliant" - and, like Joe Widdowson yesterday, expresses a hope that he can leave his London club and sign up for the Great Cleethorpes Re-Newell ("It's something I'd love to be part of"). But is Forbes in MN's plans? We still don't know after watching the interview, so that headline was just a little bit cheeky. It's a bit like the amazing piece that appeared on the Sun's website the other week headlined "Google gets its knuckles rapped", which turns out to be about Google not getting its knuckles rapped at all. Phew, wot a scorcha!

The Grimsby Telegraph, very similarly, has made an early start on its annual summertime barrel-scraping festival, with a completely pointless piece about Paul Groves not being in the running for the manager's job at Burton Albion, 'despite' somebody on a messageboard being bored the other day and making up something to the contrary just to stimulate some new posts. Nigel Clough, incidentally, is understood not to be in the running for the Town job when Mike Newell gets poached by Tranmere or someone like that in a couple of years' time.

Joe Widdowson has been a great lad to have around the building, said John Fenty (Con) in an interview recently, where he used the phrase 'the building' a number of times to mean Grimsby Town Football Club. By the same token, Wayne 'Elvis' Henderson has left the building, and Tom Newey has been a great lad to have ejected from the building. Diary reader and university student Tom Carpenter has emailed with some further thoughts. "As well as finals revision, I have been pondering the use of the word 'building' in all statements coming out of GTFC recently," he says. "As it seems to have emerged about the time the Fentydome was put on ice (Diaries passim), is it possible that it reflects a long-awaited embrace of BP as a feature of the club's future?" If only, Tom, if only. Our Tory chairman alluded in the same interview to the possibility of a new way forward for his Great Coates folly without the need for the mythical 'anchor tenant' at the associated retail bit. Despite the harsh lessons currently being learned at Darlington and Southampton, it seems this unnecessary building could still be built after all.