Cod Almighty | Diary

Float On

20 March 2026

Morning all, hope you're well. See you tomorrow.

Your A46 Diary is yet come down from the ceiling after Tuesday night. That instant of puzzlement, frozen and then released in a split-second to create a display of joy; first, the limbs in the Osmond, the covid-paced spread to the lower and then corner and then all four sides, hands in the air, cheering and wondering and knowing without clear confirmation. Even the scorer was wrongly identified. Delirium.

What a great word. Delirium. When was the last time you checked its definition? Here we go: it is an acute mental disturbance characterised by confused thinking and disrupted attention usually accompanied by disordered speech and hallucinations. But you knew that and I'm patronising you. Forgive me, I am delirious.

I have imagined that ripple of limbs and its near-instantaneous spread for the last two days. Work colleagues find me distracted, smiling vaguely, my speech disordered, staring out of windows, floating to the kitchen to boil the kettle and returning empty handed only to float back and boil water for never-made teas and coffees, over and over, filling the building with steam and swimming in its mists, seeing Rodgers leading the tiny, distant black and white figures in a celebration. I am hallucinating, confused, disrupted and drifting in delirium.

Joy remains confusing for many football fans, especially those locked in the decades-deep ruts of Grimsby Road. The wide grey skies of North East Lincs have swallowed much of our joy. Tuesday night certainly felt like our turn and after a middling at best display at Oldham it was certainly needed. One win is better than two draws, so if we accept that Artell's decision to go for the win on Saturday and concede a breakaway goal was a factor in making the follow-up the most one-sided game of the season, then I'm all for it.

No Vernam, no Gardner, no Svanthorsson make all the Jacks very dull boys. As dominant as we were on Tuesday night, the word that I couldn't ignore, the word that lurked in my head, threatening to spill out and make me the Pontoon negative Nelly, was guileless. No Vernam, no Gardner, no Svanthorsson makes all the edges of our play dull, blunt, easily headed, hoofed, hacked and heaved away.

Guileless. When was the last time you checked that definition? Here we go: it shows innocence, naiveté, a lack of deception. But you knew that and I'm patronising you. And Artell knows that. And he must look at those three guys in the treatment room and sigh and wish for a little deception, a feint one way, a drive the other, a cross low, a cross high, a shot, use of both feet, drag two players away. But you can wish for anything. You can wish for fish, and you'll have clean hands.

So, who might bring the guile and a whiff of fish tomorrow and do we need it anyway against the bottom side? Obvs. No cheeks are slapped with wet haddock without at least a crumb of cunning and conniving manipulation. There's very little in the way of a manipulation mastery, no spark, no Prometheus to warm our clay. Slim pickings...

Artell may turn then to Amaluzor. The wide man captivated in his cameo and while he may not exactly demonstrate guile, his straightforwardness certainly comes with a little more blunt force than the bustling but bland Burns. And then there's the randomness that he brings. Running and charging and bouncing and controlling and not controlling. Sometimes simply being busy can be enough. Especially busy with blunt force.

If so, then Burns will probably be the one to make way; the Irishman's contributions are reliable and efficient and yet rarely effective. Guileless. One-trick. Predictable. Sellars-Fleming isn't the one to turn to and I'd be surprised if he even made it back to the bench. Kabia is the opposite of Burns: rarely efficient, not particularly reliable when it comes to positioning and yet often very effective. I'd like to see him closer to Cook. I’d like the Thai Terror to partner Cook. I'm expecting JSB to start after Cook's thankless running on Tuesday night, the Bradford man must be exhausted after playing the tip of a handleless spear.

Barrow tomorrow and the return of a favourite. We know we're going to need at least two as the Danny Rose curse is sure to strike. He'll get a decent reception until the inevitable goal and then we'll see how well we can manage our emotions. If we're 4-0 up and he gets one in the 88th I think we'll be more than kind. If he levels or sticks in a winner like Podge always seemed to, he may have his memories of BP sullied.

Penny for his thoughts on leaving a sound club – a club said by Fleetwood's manager to be the standard, with a manager respected in the game and sought by the likes of Rotherham, a young squad full of energy and desire, a club-captain role – for a basket case on its fourth manager of the season. An interim manager. A player manager. You don't hear of those very much these days. Not interim managers – they're all the rage – but player managers. Don't expect to see him though; he's only put himself in for one unused sub role in his two games.

Form-wise, they're what you would expect: two points in the last six games, scoring four and conceding nine, Tuesday night's defeat to Salford was their 22nd of the season and they have just 29 points with nine games to go. They're doomed. We've been in that position often enough to know that they're doomed. But they will pick up a couple of surprising results before the end of the season. Tomorrow had better not be one of them.

Delirium, frustration and a mixture of dread and hope. It must be late March. The business end. The time to make it count. The time to bury the weak and battle the strong. The time to fly so hard into that ceiling that we'll need to be scraped off. We've been here before. We know this time. We know how this goes for good and for bad. Let's make it good.