Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 15 November 2004

15 November 2004

"We're not winners if we don't win headers, if we're not putting tackles, if we're not putting on a run, if we're not chasing lost causes, if we're not doubling up. If we're not doing that I'll be going crazy. I'll be going crazy. You won't ever see me sitting down." These were the words of Mr Russell Slade, when speaking to Cod Almighty's Simon Wilson back in August, and after watching his side defeated on Saturday by non-League opposition for the second time this season the Town boss has lived up to his promise, flipped his lid, and pulled in the players for extra training on a Sunday. "I didn't think we turned up first half," barked Crazy Russ after the match (although if truth be told he could have been talking about any game in the last two months). "I thought that it was a poor performance overall," added the manager madly, concluding: "That's why we're in tomorrow," in not at all measured tones.

Given that the Mariners' FA Cup exit at Exeter was notably not referred to by the BBC or anyone as a "shock" or an "upset", the casual reader might be forgiven for thinking that the mainstream media, having had the Grecians down as favourites from the off, had just this once done their homework on GTFC. The casual reader is reckoning without the Daily Telegraph, however, which has reported that "Grimsby's limp performance infuriated their manager Dean Gordon, the former Middlesbrough defender", and thus proved that it is a newspaper every bit as committed to quality sports journalism as it is to social justice and progressive thinking.

With the execrable Boston boss Steve Evans emerging victorious from his latest confrontation with Hornchurch's Garry Hill - the manager whose Dagenham & Redbridge side were denied promotion to the Football League in 2002 by Evans' dodgy financial dealings at York Street - not to mention wins for other local rivals (so I won't), the weekend just gone will have left Town supporters colder than a southerner visiting Blundell Park in January. Before you turn in despair to the use of very hard drugs, though, allow the Diary to warm your cockles with the news that Grimsby's public enemy number one, Mr David Challinor, faces a long lay-off after being stretchered from the field of play in agony during Bury's weekend cup tie! The Pringle-crippler is suspected to have suffered medial ligament chaffing, explains Shakers boss Graham Barrow, who adds: "I'm hoping it's only weeks instead of months." If there's such a thing as karma, Graham, then you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Finally today, the Diary would like to applaud Warren Fothergill of Bramhall Street, Cleethorpes, whose letter to the Grimsby Telegraph shows that, while seasons come and go, managers and players arrive and move along as the decades relentlessly march on, Town fans can still add a letter S to the name of Bobby Cumming. Sort it, Slades!