Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 16 December 2003

16 December 2003

A line-up featuring Matt Tees, Harry Wainman and John Cockerill sounds like the fantasy of a wild-eyed Mariners nostalgic unexpectedly made team manager and given a DeLorean sports car with some interesting modifications, but this is the precise assemblage that Grimsby Town Supporters Trust has now signed up as honorary members. The next issue of the GTST magazine In Cod We Trust will carry an exclusive interview with Cockers after the former GTFC midfielder and mullet-wearer this month became the third fans' hero to join the trust. Meanwhile, the draw for the trust's Fans' Day lottery takes place at the Imp at 9pm tonight. Tickets will still be available at the venue right up until the draw, and prizes include a pre-match meal, tour of the ground, signed Georges Santos shirt, DVD player, and, ooh, loads of other stuff. "Members and non-members alike are most welcome to attend," confirms the GTST website.

Bloody hell! A rag and bone man just drove past! I didn't think they still existed, still less persisted with that unintelligible bisyllabic chant thing. Is it supposed to be "rag-boooooone"? This guy sounds like he's calling "Paul Groooooooves!" That reminds me, actually - I dreamt last night that I was Christmas shopping with Paul Groves. It helps me that I can share these things.

Hopes that Town's reserve side would get their promotion campaign back in gear yesterday after last week's home defeat by Boston were dashed as the seconds crashed 2-0 at Notts County. Ooh, sorry, Pat. A side that featured Simon Ford in defence, Paul Groves and Graham Hockless in the middle and Darren Mansaram up front failed to score for the first time this season. There were seven other players as well, by the way; I was just drawing attention to those with recent first-team experience. If you'd put out a team of only four players then losing 2-0 would be quite a respectable outcome.

Graham Taylor, who is yet to become an honorary member of the supporters' trust, is the man at the middle of today's most outlandish rumour in football. The former Mariners full-back, who also managed England in the early 1990s, was both a player and a boss at neighbouring Lincoln, and this is apparently evidence enough for the Sun to run a story that he will now return to Sincil Bank as a temporary replacement for current Imps supremo Keith Alexander while he recovers from emergency brain surgery. That's Alexander, not Taylor. The club has moved swiftly to deny the claims, adding that "Keith has seen the reports and is upset by them"; and Taylor, likewise, has been quick to confirm that his current career plan remains unaltered, and he will continue to repeat the phrase "very much so" several hundred times on Radio 5 Live every Sunday afternoon.

If you were getting married in less than two weeks' time, you wouldn't expect to have the time to email a smug daily columnist on an obscure website devoted to a second division football club about the minutiae of fitness problems among the playing staff. Unless it were the columnist you were marrying, perhaps; but Al Wilkinson knows full well that the Diary is spoken for, and so we all of us owe him an infinite debt of gratitude for taking time out from trying on silly clothes and ordering serviettes to clarify the situation vis-à-vis Simon Ford's legs, which we touched upon yesterday. As it were. "I believe it was his hamstring," says Cod Almighty's answer to Roger McGough. Cheers Al!