Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 20 October 2005
20 October 2005
It's nice to know that the Diary isn't the only Grimsby-related media outlet suffering from a severe shortage of news this month: hence the tragi-comic headline for the lead story in today's Grimsby Telegraph. Naturally, one wishes Dorothy Ramsden (68) a full and rapid recovery from surgery at the same time as observing that the local paper is straying into the realms of Framley Examiner parody by headlining the story of her woes PILLOW FURY. (Note to sub: 'chronic' is not an emphatic. Look it up.) To save you reading it and being forced to saw off your own head in despair, that hospital named after the dead royal is a bit short of pillows, so they're having some more delivered today.
Oh, and there's some old tosh about the local football club submitting a fresh planning application to build a new 12,000-capacity stadium at Great Coates in time for the start of the 2008-09 season. Didn't think you'd be bothered about that though.
Gary Cohen may be unable to sit on the substitutes' bench for this Saturday's home game (hooray, a home game on a Saturday!) against Leyton Orient. The pacy, young, versatile, on-loan-from-Gretna, Tottenham-supporting, two-goals-this-season forward got a tap on his ankle during Tuesday night's disheartening farce in the LCV Trophy, collided with the Morecambe goalkeeper twice, and still played all 120 minutes of the match, leaving him rated a bit dicey for the weekend's return to games that Town actually want to win. The player may return to training today, though, reports the Grimsby Telegraph, which adds that the Mariners' problems in adequately filling both wide midfield slots may return after the match, when his fellow loanee Simon Francis could return to parent club Sheffield United, but stops short of blaming Cohen's ankle problems on the chronic pillow shortage at the local hospital.
Finally from me today (and this week, since tomorrow, children, classes will be taken by a supply Diary), we return to Tuesday for an amusing take on the evening's reserve training session. The Diary is not one to patronise or underestimate non-League football - especially given that the Mariners came within half a dozen league positions of joining it at the end of last season - but was unable to suppress a smile at the Morecambe Today website's match report, which optimistically insists that the visitors to Blundell Park overcame "a side who beat Spurs... a couple of weeks earlier" when of course Tuesday night's line-up included only three of the heroes who started against Tottenham. As if that isn't funny enough, the report goes on to rate Tony Crane's performance as worth 7 out of 10. You don't need to be that polite, you know. We're not.
So good luck to Morecambe in the Conference this season, thank you all for reading this week, and I'll see you on Saturday. Ta-ta.