Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 25 October 2005

25 October 2005

Hello, readers. Another day, another kick in the teeth for Gary Cohen and Nick Hegarty, for away supporters and exiled Town fans, and for anyone who wants to support the Mariners and also has a bit of a life. And for the UK comprehensive education system, while we're at it, but I don't suppose we can blame that one on GTFC. We begin with the news that Russell Slade is about to loan his third wide midfielder of the season after the freshly departed Simon Francis and the admittedly excellent Calvin Andrew. Town's official website has revealed this morning that, despite some promising performances on the fringes, Cohen and Hegarty will continue to be kept out of the first XI by the hard-working but sometimes infuriating Andy Parkinson and whoever Russ can rope in on loan during any given month.

Think back to the summer of this year: a time when England won the Ashes, the sixth Harry Potter book was published, Greece won the Eurovision Song Contest and Live8 achieved precisely nothing. It was also a time when a majority of Grimsby Town supporters expressed a dislike for Friday night football in a poll on the club's own official website and the club was treating those fans like morons in the case it made for bringing games forward to Friday nights. The club's response, as widely expected, is to bring another game forward to a Friday night - next month's meeting with Macclesfield, which 'clashes' with an England match - and to continue to treat its fans like morons by citing "the success of previous Friday night games at Blundell Park" when there are undiscovered civilisations in the outer reaches of the Alpha Centauri system who know very well that all those part-timers turned up for the Wycombe match only to procure ticket stubs for the Newcastle game. If it is true, as GTFC claim, that "the club has been criticised in the past for not switching games to accommodate international matches" (and some supporting evidence wouldn't go amiss, chaps), then this still fails to address the issue of why Town fans, unlike their counterparts at some other clubs, are not consulted as to whether Saturday lunchtimes, Saturday evenings or Sunday afternoons might not be preferable.

Friday night, Saturday afternoon or Sunday during the Eastenders omnibus: it's all academic as far as Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala is concerned, as the Mariners' leading scorer will be unavailable for the whole weekend around the Macclesfield game. JPK has been called up by the Democratic Republic of Congo again, this time for a friendly against Tunisia on 11 November as his nation prepares for its African Cup of Nations campaign in the New Year. Gah!

Say the name Jones to a Grimsby Town fan these days and they'll likely come back at you with a comment along the lines of: "I can't believe he's the same player! He's been fantastic this season holding the defence together!" If not, then their response might be: "Well, he's scored three useful goals but his last few appearances have been disappointing. In my opinion it's time to bring Gritton back into the starting line-up." Alternatively, they may well ask why you're just saying random names with no context or anything. But if you'd said the name Jones to a Grimsby Town fan in the early 1990s, they'd have said: "He's made some good signings, this Buckley bloke, but that one's a disaster." To this day, ex-Town 'striker' Murray Jones remains living proof of a successful former manager's fallibility in the transfer market, but from this day he is also caretaker-manager at Crawley Town of the Conference, who have given the sack to previous boss Francis Vines, just as he'd given up his own sack by quitting his day job as a postman. I assume it's the same Murray Jones anyway; there can't be too many of them floating about the place, eh.