Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Wednesday 14 April 2004
14 April 2004
If supporting the Mariners seems like all tunnel and no light, then you may care to consider for a moment the exploits of Joe Lightowler. After marking his promotion to the reserves for last week's meeting with Lincoln with a tremendous long-range goal, the talented teenager returned to the youth team last Saturday but continued where he'd left off in midweek - with two more spectacular strikes in his side's 2-2 draw with their counterparts from Bradford. With Town's relegation to Division Three likely to be sealed with at least a game to spare, speculation is bound to arise that one of the meaningless and entirely depressing run-outs against Tranmere or Brentford could be used to give Lightowler a taste of some hot first-team action. The club's official website, for its part, is so excited that it devotes 54 words to the player's most recent goalscoring adventures, and only three days after they occurred.
Back to bleak reality, then, and the Blundell Park treatment room, where the Mariners' sole flickering hope of second division salvation - also known as Isaiah Rankin - languishes with the thigh strain that reduced his role at Loftus Road last Saturday to that of a great despairing prophet gazing in silence and torment upon the follies of his kinsmen as he hopes to resume light training within a day or two with a vision of leading his people to victory over Rushden & Diamonds. Darren Barnard and Craig Armstrong could miss out against the funny rural folk this weekend, while Jonny Rowan could come back, but none of it's very certain yet, so I wouldn't go putting your mortgage on a 7-6 win for Town with the soon-to-be-released Tetney-born forward as the first goalscorer.
The Grimsby Telegraph may be investing £2m in a state-of-the-art Ferag Rollstream JetFeeder inserting machine - which offers hi-tech stacking, strapping and bundling, with low repair and maintenance requirements - but it is as vulnerable to GTFC news dearth as the lowest-budget of parish newsletters, and today resorts to Glanford Park strife to fill those column inches. I don't think anyone really still talks about column inches in the newsrooms, but it's what you understand. The exclamation mark-addicted local rag reacts to the departure of Scunny chairman Chris Holland with the news that Brian Laws' successor in the managerial hotseat could be, er, Brian Laws. Such an appointment would be considerably less popular among Iron supporters than with their Grimbarian counterparts, whose recent nightmares of third division football have been worsened considerably by the prospect of the Mariners getting whupped next season by a Scunthorpe side deftly managed by a Buckley-Groves dream team.