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Diary - Tuesday 20 April 2004

20 April 2004

Joe Lightowler's stock as future saviour of GTFC, miracle healer of disease and bringer of world peace, equality and universal happiness has taken a terrible tumble after his shock failure to score four times in yesterday's reserve game against Hartlepool. Fans flocked to Blundell Park in their ones in the hope of glimpsing the 17-year-old chosen one walk on the Humber estuary or feed the entire capacity crowd with loaves, fishes and half-time oranges, but the visitors strode back up the east coast with a 3-0 victory under their belts - not quite matching the dominance over the Mariners that their first-team counterparts have managed this season, but fairly comfortable nonetheless. Before the second string can get their youthful breath back, their penultimate outing this season takes place as early as tomorrow afternoon - presumably at the behest of Sky TV - at the Theatre of Dither, also known as Glanford Park.

Town director John Fenty, seen by some as the eventual successor to Peter Furneaux as chairman, is about to raise £20m from the sale of his Grimsby-based company Five Star Fish, but refuses to be drawn on whether the deal has implications for GTFC. The Grimmo Telegraph reports that the firm is set to be acquired by, er, another firm, within the next few weeks, and hints that Fenty will reinvest the money but adds: "Mr Fenty declined to comment on if the deal would have an impact on Grimsby Town Football Club as the two are separate issues." Which may be true in the cold, hard world of the business world, but Town fans with a more holistic, Zen-like view of the cosmos are sure to argue that, just as the concept of self is illusory, so all of creation is essentially a single, eternally empathic entity, all that divides Blundell Park from the rest of the universe, equally, is simply the product of the materialist Western mind, and that new 20,000-capacity stadium wouldn't go amiss thank you very much.

Because I'm in a dead good mood because of my new trainers; because GTFC's new assistant commercial thingummy-bloke Dave Smith is really nice; because you've all suffered quite enough this season - and because there's bugger all else to put in the Diary right now - it has been decided that Diary readers should be rewarded for their good taste with some free tix for Town's final home game of this wretched campaign. Yep - the Diary has two pairs of tickets for the match against Brentford on Saturday 1 May to quite literally give away to two of you lot. And being the paragons of wisdom that you are, you'll jump at the chance of wearing your brains on your sleeves, won't you? So: three questions, today, tomorrow and Thursday. Answer them all correctly and you're in with a shout (winner will be drawn at random, by Rolf Harris, etc etc). So here's your starter for ten.

In his playing days, Town's assistant commercial fella-me-lad Dave Smith scored on his Mariners debut - against which club?

• Brentford
• Burnley
• West Bromwich Albion

That's it for today then. Mail your answers to diary@codalmighty.com with the subject line "Happy birthday Mr Diary, I loooove you baby". Be sure to come back tomorrow for question two, and to laugh at how hungover I am.