Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 21 January 2004

21 January 2004

As if the current disarray on the pitch were not depressing enough, Paul Groves appears to have become the innocent victim of an embarrassing communications breakdown at Blundell Park. It was widely alleged yesterday that the Mariners' player-boss had been ordered by the board to concentrate on managing: "Paul has a crucial decision to make - whether to continue as a player or to concentrate his efforts on management," said a statement from the directors reported by Sky Sports, among others. "We think that at this time, the club requires a full-time manager. The present arrangement is not working." So if this is the board's considered opinion, then why, for one thing, did they appoint a player-manager in the first place? Their analysis, for another, is pretty rubbish given that Groves has played only twice in Town's current run of one win in 12 league games. And for a third, the manager is quoted in today's Grimsby Telegraph saying: "If the board want to speak to me about my position then I'm sure they will do. But the first I heard about that was through the teletext." The Diary remains fully supportive of the Furneaux regime, but the last thing the club needs right now is this kind of cack-handedness.

The Diary is also interested to discover that two readers received text messages from the club informing them that the game against Wrexham that was originally scheduled for 20 December and then postponed due to a waterlogged pitch had been rearranged for 20 January. All of which is factually unimpeachable; the issue here is that the messages were received at around 11 o'clock last night, by which time Denis Smith's side had been up to North East Lincs, bringing 72 fans with them, strolled off with the three points and were probably fast asleep on their team coach in the knowledge of a job well done, halfway back to north Wales. At least when Grovesie was reading about his future on Ceefax he wasn't paying 10 bob a go for the privilege.

So is anything happening today? Apparently Marcel Cas is still a Grimsby Town player and wants his wages paying up until the end of the current season at least. The sulky Dutchman was thought last week to have agreed the cancellation of his contract with the Mariners but a Peter Furneaux interview on Radio Humberside last night now suggests otherwise. Any radar-lugged Diary readers who caught it are urged to share the goss, as there is nowt about the story on the BBC Humber website or indeed anywhere else. Similarly, the Diary heard somewhere that Alan Pouton has failed his medical with Gillingham and will be hot-footing it back up the A1 pronto to carry on trousering four grand a week from GTFC for limping around and playing the odd game of football here and there. We should have seen it coming. Again, though, there seems to be nothing about this anywhere on the electronic interweb, so I might just have dreamt it.

Mark Wilson is a former player from the Grimsby Town FC School of Excellence who was poached by Manchester United, then signed for Middlesbrough and is now about to join Sheffield Wednesday on a month's loan. Mark Wilson is also an employee of the pharmaceutical industry in leafy Hertfordshire, a highly articulate Paul Groves loyalist and regular correspondent to the Diary, and he appears to have received a copy of Lynne Truss's Eats Shoots and Leaves for Christmas. "The current malaise at BP has forced me onto the official site's messageboard to help me to try and keep abreast of rumour and counter rumour," he writes. "As if the parlous state of the club wasn't bad enough my spirits have been plunged into the depths by the stupefyingly poor standard of English that is used by participants. Spelling is poor to atrocious, punctuation is generally missing and few seem to be able to string a coherent sentence together." Maybe the last part is a tribute to the manager, Mark. "To cap it all, some poor souls have to use 'text' language to hide their illiteracy. If I had written a piece for public scrutiny that was so bad my former English teacher would have had me walking the streets of Scartho with a sandwich board exclaiming my idiocy.

"Can Cod Almighty set up a chat room that is monitored for spelling, syntax and grammar," continues our prescriptive grammarian, "where people wanting to hold a virtual conversation can do so without having to resort to calling for a twelve year old to translate it? Can people who use 'm8' and 'gr8' be banned from the forum? Could we have half time entertainment at BP where anyone who has ever written 'coz' is forced to join Mighty Mariner in a spelling test?" Scartho, eh, Mark? Oh, aren't we all la-di-dah! I bet he pronounces it properly and everything...

Finally today, the Diary is delighted, as always, to hear from Michael Shelton, aka Genius, the young man who is living proof that impeccable manners and sitting in the Pontoon need not be mutually exclusive. Michael has been stirred to compose email by the question of Paul Groves' successor, should Town's current run of relegation form ultimately cost the mumbling one his job. "As former Town players who've managed England go," he writes (Genius, not Paul), "Graham Taylor's quite high up there. Potential replacement for Groves?? Nah, you're right..." Very much so, Michael.