Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 16 October 2003

16 October 2003

Paul Groves pulled off a tactical masterstroke in the second division promotion race at Hillsborough last night by forcing Sheffield Wednesday to remain in the LDV Vans Trophy. Owls boss Chris Turner had made clear his resentment at having to enter the competition for small clubs, calling it a distraction from the real business of taking his club back to its rightful place in the higher echelons of the league; and the Town manager shrewdly realised that losing to Wednesday in the Trophy would help his side steal a march on them in the chase for the Division Two top spots. Hence the Mariners allowing their sloppy seconds, also known as Adam Proudlock, a 72nd-minute goal to cancel out an early blunder by Darren Mansaram in which the lively but naive young striker carelessly fired home left-footed from the edge of the Wednesday area. After half an hour of goalless extra time sapped the home side's league energy still further, a missed penalty by Stuart Campbell brilliantly condemned the Owls to at least another season of second division football.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Rutland, Town's ill-starred attempts to abandon Blundell Park for a soulless, inaccessible margarine tub outside Great Coates have been resurrected. The club has issued a statement (but apparently only to the Grimsby Telegraph so far) to the effect that it will revive its efforts to get the new ground built by trying to buy the land on which they want to build it. Which makes so much sense that you wonder why they didn't think of it when the Taylor report was published; and I dare say it'd have cost a few quid less back then. Hey, somebody gimme a job.

In the run-up to football's Kick It Out week - or fortnight; whatever's your poison! - Al Wilkinson applauds Town for an imaginative anti-racism project. "Now I know why Livvo has gone," he writes. "Groves got rid of the big slow white target man in an attempt to move Town into the positive discrimination mainstream by then bringing in a big slow black target man. Many praises to the liberal thinking, but... Iffy Onuora?"