Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 20 October 2003

20 October 2003

Hello readers. Miles here. It's very quiet in CA Towers today. Mr Diary is away for the week, working on an oil rig; and Mat is taking his second holiday of the year, the stuffy get. This means that not only am I guesting on this here diary page for today - and, if you're unlucky, the rest of the week - but I'll also be filling in for Mr Hare in his bet-based battle against Coco. Ah, hello, Andy's just come into the office now, back from taking Coco for his morning swing in the park. Hello Andy... I what? This weekend just gone? Oh bugger. Ah yes, Mat fans may have noticed that due to a technical error, there were no tips this weekend. Or rather there were tips, it's just that someone forgot to put them up. Coco. It was Coco. He forgot. Ahem. Apologies to any of you who rely on Mat's tips to make your fortunes every weekend, but just for the sake of completeness, we'll post them up later today, so we can see how the human vs chimp competition is progressing.

Mat's system, incidentally, predicted a draw for the Colchester game, as did Coco and Mystic Mick, but I'm sure they'll all be happy enough to be wrong. Well, except Coco - all he cares about is bananas. Paul Groves was certainly happy enough with the CA triumvirate's inaccuracy, telling the Grimsby Telegraph that the win was a deserved one. I have to agree. I wasn't at the match or anything, I'm just incredibly biased. Both of the GT's Saturday articles concerning the 2-0 win, by the way, insist on calling Mick Boulding "former Aston Villa winger", which I found a trifle bizarre. Are they trying to bring him down by reminding him of this career blip or is their random adjective generator on the blink?

The question of match fixing rears its ugly head thanks to Colchester's official site, which has front page news regarding the 18 October Blundell Park defeat dated Friday 17 October. Hmmm. Amusingly, the article itself is accompanied by a picture of the Us taking on QPR rather than the Mariners and mentions that Simon Ford was replaced by Dean Crowe, who I'm sure you'll agree looks a fascinating gentleman. The match report also notes that "Mike Edwards went up for a header with McGleish and fell to the floor having connected with the U's player's arm" - this presumably in a similar way to the way that David Beckham ran into Alpay's finger.

Saturday also saw Town's youth team taking on Hartlepool, but the news from that fixture isn't as good, I'm afraid: the Mariners were trailing 2-0 when keeper Paul Fraser broke his arm, and, like, wasn't able to continue. Although the closing paragraph on the official site makes it sound like an obituary, Paul will be out of hozzy today, so if you're thinking of taking him grapes, pop round his house with them, eh.

Away from football for a moment, and BBC News notes that the EU have recommended a ban on the fishing of cod. A decade or two back, this might have spelt employment disaster in and around Grimsby, but as it is, until the EU impose a ban on fishing frozen pizza, we're probably safe.

Well, that's Monday. Probably see you tomorrow unless anyone else volunteers. Ta-ra!