Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Saturday 22 February 2003

22 February 2003

A Town team with only one forward leads for most of the game at Portman Road this afternoon before returning to the bad habits of earlier this season and conceding an equaliser at 4:50pm. Lone striker Michael Boulding restores the Mariners' lead on 24 minutes after an early Paul Groves strike (yay!) is quickly cancelled out by Darren Bent, who is also responsible for Ipswich's second. John Oster (yay!) and fellow loan signing Richard Hughes make the team at the expense of Chris Thompson and Terry Cooke, seemingly considered an extravagance in away games.

And the Mariners' ongoing defensive ineptitude has finally seen them drop into the bottom three, as Brighton notch a third consecutive win, at home to Millwall by a goal to nil, and clamber up to 21st place. That's right - Brighton. Stoke's goal difference descends to the profundity of Town's as they get lamped 6-0 at Forest; while elsewhere at the foot of the table, the Wendys scrape a goalless draw at rubbish old Palace - which, admittedly, is more than Town ever manage there. But Diary readers of a superstitious bent - sorry, bad choice of word - may be encouraged to note that in a 1963 photograph that appears in the current When Saturday Comes, a set of league tables displays GTFC lying where other than fourth from bottom of the old Division Two. Well, it'll do me.

Ex-Town midfielder Tommy Widdrington, who if pointing were passing would have been one of the game's greats, makes a rare appearance on the scoresheet for Hartlepool, who trash Swansea 4-0; while his former teammate Jamie Forrester nets a penno as the third division's biggest lower mid-table club Hull stutter to a 1-1 home draw with Cambridge. It's love-all in the Lincs derby 'twixt Scunny and Lincoln, and Boston further ease their relegation worries with an excellent 3-0 win over Kidderminster.

A-ha-haand finally, a lighter note on which to dull the maddening pain of today's news. Following the Diary's appeal for information on Thursday as to the fate of Town's recent trialists, Mark Wilson has emailed to explain that following his unsuccessful trial with the Mariners, Leon Trotsky signed for a Mexican club before being killed in a bizarre ice-pick accident. "Rumours are rife," adds our man, "that the 'accident' may have something to do with a disagreement he had whilst in Moscow." Thanks for that, Mark - it's certainly as plausible an explanation as any we've heard. But what's happened to poor old Wayne Gill, eh? Email codalmightydiary@yahoo.co.uk with your conspiracy theories.