Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Saturday 22 October 2005

22 October 2005

Town's lower mid-table home form continues with a not unexpected 1-0 defeat by Leyton Orient, who climb one point and one place above the Mariners in the fourth division table. The gameplan unravels today on the 43-minute mark, when the London side reap the due benefits of their first-half superiority with a Craig Easton header from 10 yards out, and some will point the finger at Russell Slade for his ongoing insistence on approaching home games as if they were away games, with early containment and reliance on counterattacking, and selection of the lumpy Gary Jones ahead of the rejuvenated Martin Gritton. The now routine second-half fightback is again spirited and inadequate, and Town drop to third place in the table as a 2-1 win over Lincoln takes Wycombe to the top, two points ahead of the Mariners. After the artificially inflated crowd figure for Town's last home defeat, half of those planning to attend next Wednesday's big, big cup tie against big, big Newcastle United resume relations with Freshney Place and Sky TV and today's gate reverts to a more realistic 4,963 - or 41.35 per cent of the capacity of the proposed new stadium.

Four days after getting knocked out of the Light Commercial Vehicles Trophy on purpose, Town now have another cup game to not take seriously. Today's draw for the first round of obscure knockout tournament the FA Cup has handed GTFC a not terribly exciting home tie against fourth division rivals Bristol Rovers, to be played the first weekend of November if I remember rightly (I want me dinner and I can't be arsed to check). So as one door closes, another one slams in your face. Is that another Blackadder quote?

Clearly not having realised how stupid the club made itself look in recent seasons by publicly squabbling with the Grimsby Telegraph and Radio Humberside, GTFC have gone after the local paper again. The run-up to the Newcastle game has seen a mix-up over arrangements for the sale of the last few tickets in which the Telewag seems to have given supporters who queued and missed out earlier, but were handed preference vouchers to buy tickets later when the extra seats were approved, the mistaken impression that they had to attend today's match to be able to get their mitts on the tix. The Mariners' outraged official website declares: "The Headline on the back page of the Grimsby Telegraph - 'NOW CUP VOUCHERS HAVE TO PAY AGAIN' is categorically wrong and will be asked to be immediately retracted by the Editor of the Grimsby Telegraph with a full apology to GTFC & all the supporters they have upset with their damaging headline." Quite apart from the disastrous wording here (the headline will be asked to be retracted?), the Diary can't help reflecting that if the club could stop making such a pig's arse of its communications in the first place then there would be even less need for it to adopt such a pointlessly confrontational tone once again.