Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 30 October 2003

30 October 2003

The messageboards will again be alive with the sound of nesbits wanting Michael Boulding to be dropped after Phil Jevons' hat-trick for GTFC reserves yesterday afternoon. The former Everton striker, who put all his goalscoring eggs in one Grimsby basket with that sensational winner in Town's League Cup victory over Liverpool two years ago, bagged three as the second string ran out 5-2 winners over Scunthorpe in the Maplin's Cup or something, with Graham Hockless and an own goal making up the balance. "I'm just going to get my head down, work hard and be patient," the handsomely remunerated forward tells the Grimsby Telegraph, though it is unclear whether this is a new interview or the paper has started running repeats. Pondering the cases of Jevons, Alan Pouton and Terry Cooke, the Diary wonders whether Town fans whose favourite players are the ones who never play might have something of the night about them.

For the third time this season Town are to be accorded the tremendous honour of having their left-back nicked, as Darren Barnard has been rewarded for his barnstorming performance for Wales against Serbia & Montenegro earlier this month with another international call-up. This time it's Stockport who will benefit from Mark Hughes' brazen lack of shame at resorting to Grimsby players, as his side's Euro 2004 play-offs against plucky little Russia coincide with County's visit to BP on 15 November. The Diary seems to have reported all of this on 14 October, as it goes, but the club and the BBC are both running with it today and I didn't want to feel left out. Bazza also reveals to BBC Humber that he is "pretty confident" of recovering from his bruised foot in time to face Rushden this Saturday.

Also celebrating a call-up for the land of his fathers is Mr Daniel Coyne, lately of Leicester, less lately of Grimsby. Not that I would normally have mentioned it, but it's quite a good link to the news that the custard custodian made his full debut for the midlands snack food fetishists last night, reportedly pulling off a series of eye-catching saves but failing to prevent his side slipping out of the League Cup at Villa Park by the far from emphatic margin of one goal to nil. Coyne has been "singled out for praise", as the journalists say, by Foxes boss Micky Adams, raising the possibility, however remote, of the former Mariner displacing England's Ian Walker as his new club's number one number one.

All that remains for the Diary today, then, is to urge you to spend the next week laughing at the way Michael Howard talks.