Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 5 October 2005

5 October 2005

As the great Victorian dramatist, wit and dandy Oscar Wilde once put it, there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is losing at home to Darlington. Grimsby Town Football Club, of course, have experienced quite a bit of both recently, and all this being top of the table malarky is leading to some unlikely angles in the coverage as the media tie themselves in knots trying to do pieces on Grimsby without going on and on about cod and trawlers. Hence an interview with Russell Slade on the official website of the entire goddamn Football League which picks up a casual remark by the Town boss about Chelsea being a well-organised team and decides the Mariners are "taking the Chelsea route" to success. Not that John Fenty hoodwinked the employees of Five Star Fish into selling him their shares at a fraction of their real value, you understand.

Another day, another few millilitres of news from the drip-feed of information about tickets for big League Cup matches. GTFC have announced that holders of two stubs from two of the three home games against Hull, Notts County and Wycombe, although not necessarily in that order, will be able to buy a ticket for the Newcastle match on Wednesday 26 October starting this Sunday at 10am. I guess that means season ticket holders can buy one now then, unless they live in Lincolnshire and want to pay by credit card over the phone, or something. Must have missed that. More importantly, why do they talk about keeping the 'stubs' from your tickets? Isn't the stub the little bit on the left that the turnstile operator keeps? Surely the big part that they give back to you and you keep is not, in fact, the stub but the ticket itself? Enquiring minds need to know.

When players of the calibre of Peter Handyside, Gary Croft and John Oster came through the Mariners' ranks but then failed to realise their tremendous potential at other clubs, observers could have been forgiven for stealing the title of a Jonathan Richman song and urging GTFC: "Don't let our youth go to waste." It is to be hoped, then, that the cohort of teenagers currently squeezing their zits and quaffing Smirnoff Ice in the Blundell Park changing rooms soon burst through into Town's first team and shake the footballing world to its very foundations, and they took a step in the right direction with a win last night in the Midlands Youth Cup. Hey, oaks and acorns. "Grimsby Town Youth saw of Tamworth," reports the club's official website, possibly omitting the words "the back", "a really dodgy area" or "the arms and legs off".

Before the Diary belatedly shows Town how to eat Shrewsbury for lunch by enjoying a sandwich made with shropshire blue, there's just time for an email from Mark Wilson. "In a quiet moment I was perusing another football website," confesses Mark, "and was shocked to see that Middlesbrough have drawn Litex Lovech in the UEFA Cup. Didn't she have a hit in the early 80s with 'Lucky Number'?" Well, I wouldn't accuse you of being a closet Leeds fan, MW, but great minds clearly think alike.