Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 1 June 2005

1 June 2005

Hello! Well, there may be a grand total of no midfielders on the books, but Risky Russ has already taken steps to address his shortage of strikers with the acquisitions of Jermaine Palmer and Gary Cohen - assuming, of course, that the latter does eventually sign for the Mariners and not Northampton, Darlington or Bristol Rovers - and now there's good news for the defence too. "Town boss Russell Slade is confident that defender Justin Whittle will commit to another season at Blundell Park," announces the club's official website today, next to a picture of Anthony Williams. The GTFC captain is expected to sign a new contract when he gets backoffizollerdiz, as we say in Grimsby.

Before you go off mocking the OS - because I know what you're like, you people, tut tut tut - the above-mentioned picture of Anthony Williams does have some relevance to the state of the world on Wednesday 1 June 2005, as it looks like Town's crumbly custodian will not be signing the new contract that nobody but Resolute Russ thought he should have been offered anyway. Not that the manager is letting the need for a replacement act as too much of a drag on his laid-back style, man. "I have targeted a keeper and hopefully there will be something there soon," Russ has told his club's website, presumably before shrugging his shoulders, mumbling "whatever", and sloping off to his bedroom to listen to the new Beck album.

Elsewhere on the site that is official, we find that Town's bid to have John McDermott grade 2 listed (or knighted - whichever is cheaper) has taken another step forward as Macca's name "has been forwarded to Westminster for consideration for future honours rounds". I guess the next step is to email your MP. The OS goes on to list some of John's many achievements in typically idiosyncratic fashion, pointing out: "Before the Darlington game, Macca was on 584 league games with another 96 cup games to add to that making a total of 680 Mariners games under his belt." At this point you may be wondering why the OS seems to be choosing an entirely random point in the 2004-05 season from which to cite the player's appearance stats. In which case your curiosity will be sated by the knowledge that they've just copied and pasted the text from the page they published in March, when the 'Gong for Macca' campaign began, without updating this now peculiar-looking statistic. Yeah, I know. They're very busy people, though.

Finally, my thanks to Last Minute Diary for stepping in yesterday at... er... now, when was it they stepped in? At very short notice - that's it. And I was very interested in LMD's reference to the Mariners Bet prices on next season's fourth division title. It's particularly interesting that a certain website describes the 20/1 available on GTFC as "incredible". Interesting as well as entirely apposite, because 20/1 is just about the shortest you will find the Mariners' odds anywhere, and falls short by an incredible margin of the 33/1 on offer from Totesport. So if you're daft enough to back Town then go to Totesport, and support the club financially by repaying the Diary for this useful advice with a half-time cup of tea one day next season.