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Diary - Thursday 21 April 2005

21 April 2005

Blows can be hurricanes. Blows can be punches. Blows can also be viruses, and the latest blow to the Mariners' frankly pitiful hopes of taking anything at all from this Saturday's derby fixture against Scunthorpe is just such an infection, contracted by key defender Terrell Forbes. This is the grave news borne by today's Grimsby Telegraph, which adds that the about-to-do-one centre-half is missing training as we speak. Oooh, Tony Crane: this could be your perfect moment.

Town's official website is putting it down to the experience of the home team, but the two late goals that saw off the club's reserves at Lincoln yesterday afternoon came from little Impy youth products. True, it was ancient striker Martin Carruthers who gave the cathedral types a 25th-minute lead from the penalty spot, but after Joe Lightowler's equaliser (what odds a late call-up to the first team this season?) the decisive strikes for the hosts came from two 19-year-olds: Oliver Ryan and Grimsby-born Chris Gordon. A quick look back at the OS tells us that Town reserves' league programme will come to an end... oh. Last Monday.

If you obstinately refuse to believe that anything good can happen in the present and insist on deluding yourself by constructing in your mind a false idealised picture of the past in which there were no bicycle accidents, everyone left their doors unlocked, and Grimsby Town were really good, then you can either vote Conservative in next month's general election or shell out twenty notes for a new DVD of the Mariners' two visits to Wembley in the 1997-98 season. The Diary advises the latter.

And finally today: whatever happened to Gambian defender Hassan Nyang?