Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 2 December 2003

2 December 2003

"Football, beer and betting - what more could you want?" It's not Mat Hare; it's Town's official site - which announces a bit further down the page that a GTFC reserve squad featuring injury returnee Mr Alan Pouton travels to Huddersfield this afternoon for a behind-closed-doors friendly at the McAlpine Stadium. The match goes ahead at 1pm and was arranged by Terriers boss Peter Taylor - once linked with the manager's job at Blundell Park - as extra practice for his players, having been excused FA Cup duty this weekend courtesy of a 1-0 defeat to Accrington in the first round. And did you see the winning goal? Cor!

In a rush of festive cheer Town are opening the club shop late on Thursdays between now and the Queen's Speech, 'late' being until 8pm, and with first-team players around to sign autographs and stuff between 6 and 7pm, cos they all have to be tucked up in bed with their cocoa by 8, y'see. In Alan Pouton's case, for some reason, that is a particularly charming image. All the cash you spend there goes to help the club, of course; whereas all the cash you spend on these two fantastic Cod Almighty T-shirts just goes to pay for the hosting of this website - but just ask yourself what all the cool kids will be wearing for the Oldham game on Boxing Day. Not to mention all the hypothermic kids.

Mel Thurby has taken the Diary's rather brusque dismissal of his Lennie Lawrence panegyric (and there's some homework for Stu Morton) with admirable good grace. "In the season that Groves took over from Lennie," he writes, "we avoided relegation, due to the fact that over half the 1st team that had been unavailable to Lennie for most of the season, came back fit when Groves took over. It was at the end of the next full season that Groves was in charge that we got relegated, you can hardly blame Lennie for that!!" Sir, I can and I will! It's sort of like the railways. The Potters Bar train crash - just to choose a random example in no way connected with Town's sponsor - took place after Labour came to power, but it's ultimately the Conservatives' fault, because it wouldn't have happened had they not privatised the railways. OK, so Labour should've renationalised them, but, erm... the taxpayers wouldn't stand for funding Zhang Enhua's wages, or something. Yeah.

"I forgot to thank you for the compliment," continues Mel T. "Jedi maybe, young, ummm, nope... I've been watching Town since Bob Crosby was smacking them in at the Pontoon end (once saw him burst the net at that end taking a penalty), suffice to say I first watched Town with my dad when I was 5 years old, in the early 50's. Nuff said!" Yeah, but I couldn't really introduce a Return of the Jedi quote by saying "middle-aged jedi", could I.

Finally, I hereby announce that because Mrs Diary and I are off to Sheffield to see Belle and Sebastian, this week's guest diary will be brought forward to tomorrow. Well, that's what I've told the CA editors, anyway. Well, asked them. Nicely. And made them all a cup of tea. And washed their cars. If all of that does the trick then I'll be back on Thursday. See ya.