Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 3 October 2005

3 October 2005

If the home line-up in tonight's John McDermott benefit match against Hull City doesn't boast an entire galaxy of former Mariners stars then it should include at least one galactic sector of the lower spiral arm. Alan Pouton, Clive Mendonca, Daryl Clare, Jim Dobbin, Paul Futcher and Ivano Bonetti are all beaming up to BP as we speak, and Town's official website adds that "Aidan Davison, Tony Gallimore, Peter Handyside, Mark Lever, Wayne Burnett, Kevin Donovan, Dave Smith, Lee Nogan, Jack Lester and Paul Groves have all said they will do their best to be here", which sounds promising, if a little too close for comfort to the prologue of one of the Diary's many disappointingly attended house parties. Hull manager Peter 'Mr Grimsdale' Taylor, meanwhile, has promised to send "a strong squad" for the match, which makes you wonder how he's managed to find one at such short notice.

In any case, you might very well doubt the sincerity of Taylor's claim when you first hear the news that GTFC reserves' cup game against the mah-ty Tah-gers, scheduled for this Wednesday, has been postponed and "provisionally rescheduled" for 4 January. The Diary certainly did, anyway. "Oh aye?" I thought to myself. "I bet that's because he's sending the reserves to Macca's do tonight, the cheeky Norman Wisdom-impersonating scamp!" Then I read a bit closer and saw that the postponement is at Town's request. "Gah!" I thought to myself again. "That's buggered up the angle I was going to take on it in the Diary, then!" Except that it hasn't entirely, because I've done this instead. Which isn't quite as good, but you can't have everything. Unless you manage Chelsea, obviously.

Transfer speculation now, and Simon Francis reckons he might get the hell outta Bramall on a permanent if his loan spell with the Mariners goes well. Oooh! "My main priority is to do really well in my loan at Grimsby and see what other things happen," the Sheffield United utility dude has told a website with some adverts on it. "A lot of scouts watch top-of-the-league games so they'll be watching Grimsby all the time." Oh. But the Mariners have been linked, rather excitingly, with Lee Holmes, the England u19 left winger who became Derby's youngest ever player at an employment law-troubling 15 years 267 days when he made his debut against Town on Boxing Day 2002. Oooh! "I can't afford to let him go out," says Rams manager Phil Brown. Oh. Sounds a bit like Mrs Diary when I need to borrow her credit cards.

Finally today, Town's top-of-the-league having-a-laugh 0-0 draw at Shrewsbury on Saturday in fact set a new record for consecutive away games without losing, as opposed to merely equalling the old one. The result at Playful Meadow means the Mariners have not tasted the dodgy pint of away defeat in their last nine day trips, and in the run-up to the game GTFC had stated that this would match a club record set in 1956. But somebody got their sums wrong, and it turns out that the old record only stretched to eight matches. A stereotyped 46-year-old virgin male statistician has been sent out from Blundell Park, wiping his spectacles and blinking in the unaccustomed daylight, to declare that the current sequence of results actually represents a new club record, before fending off questions from the assembled throng of journalists about his personal hygiene and whether Town's next QXL auction would feature his collection of Star Trek DVDs.