Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 6 March 2003

6 March 2003

As if life couldn't get any worse after the last two matches, Town fans wake up today to find their team bottom of Division One. A certain appalling record - that of Town's defence, not the last Stereophonics album - means that wins last night for Stoke and Sheffield Wednesday, who stuck five past the rubbish Coventry side that strolled to victory at Blundell Park last Saturday, have dumped the Mariners into 24th place on goal difference. Optimists will point out that the right set of results in the next round of matches could take Town back out of the bottom three - but does anyone seriously expect us to beat Forest next Monday?

And the bad news for supporters hoping for an end to those back-four blues - they're like twelve-bar blues, except your defenders don't wake up this morning, this afternoon, or ever - is that Tony Gallimore will not receive an FA ban despite picking up his fifth booking of the season in Tuesday night's thrashing by the flashing Blades of Sheffield. Some rule or other means that because his first four yellows came before the end of February, and the atmospheric pressure was above 1022 millibars, Town's lovable left-back will just get told off instead. Lovable if you're the other team's right winger, anyway. Or his mum.

At this rate fans might be tempted to simply give up on the first team and support the reserves instead, who proved that they at least know what winning means by running out 2-1 victors over Mansfield yesterday. Jonny Rowan and Graham Hockless found the net for Paul Wilkinson's second string, which he has detuned to G# in an effort to produce a Sonic Youth stylee atonal drone and distract the opposition goalkeeper. Trialists Kevin George and Mads 'Stan' Mortensen - who the Grimsby Telegraph says won't be offered a contract, so that was a waste of time - started the match, but Diary readers will again be disappointed by the notable absence of Manchester United forward Kalam Moon Anorak and legendary midfield non-player Wayne Gill.

Stockport defender Dave Challinor has washed his hands of responsibility for his livelihood-wrecking challenge on Martin Pringle in Town's great escape from relegation a year ago. "I know my conscience is clear about what happened," the player tells the Stockport Express, now that Pringle has dropped his plans to sue. "There was no malice on my part. I'm not that sort of player." Well, the Diary is convinced by the sheer simplicity of Challinor's alibi. If Jeffrey Archer had only thought of telling the jury: "I'm not that sort of ruthless, lying, despicable conman," then he need never have been sent to rot in a Lincolnshire prison. Sorry - tautology.