Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 25 January 2006

25 January 2006

Ever keen to avoid becoming predictable, Town have cunningly ditched their increasingly conventional strategy of beating rubbish teams and losing to good ones by rolling over for the worst team in the league. Yeah, I know I said yesterday that Stockport weren't that bad. Shut up. Last night's 2-1 defeat at Edgeley Park leaves the Mariners' chances of automatic promotion looking slenderer than at any time since they entered the top three in September, with one win in five games since the turn of the year, and five points from a possible fifteen. Oh, and just the four bookings this time: one fewer than at Torquay, but with Fen Butcher hurriedly squeezing another one in before his suspension. With Town's defence, recently the tightest in the basement by far, suddenly looking shakier than a Shakin' Stevens gig with four encores, the club's hopes of avoiding another season in this shite-awful division now appear to rest heavily upon Justin Whittle's poorly knee. Have we tried faith healing, or is there not enough faith left around North East Lincs to make it worthwhile?

Sladey's chance to sort it comes this Saturday, of course, at home to Peterborough, and if it's too early for the opponents' team news there is at least something noteworthy to report from the London Road manager's office. Posh boss Mark Wright, who was sacked by Oxford in 2001 following allegations that he racially abused referee Joe Ross, has been suspended after a bust-up last weekend involving defender Sean St Ledger. Some sources are alleging another racial element to the incident, but if this is true then it must be too ethnically complicated for the Diary's simple Grimbarian mind, since St Ledger appears to be no less caucasian than Wright himself. Either way, it probably means they'll be really up for it this weekend and will beat Town three-nil.

Town's - let's be kind - struggling reserve team were meant to be playing today, but now they aren't. It remains unclear whether this is because of freezing weather conditions or because Scarborough were so obviously going to win that GTFC just cancelled the game and let them have the three points.

Over to the Diary's very own Dictionary Corner now, where Keith Collins and Andy Lumbard lie in wait for usages and abusages of the language. KC was not too distressed by last night's result to spot another misspelling of our glorious homeland last night, as he has emailed to point out that Ceefax alleged Stockport to have beaten a team called "Grismby", while Andy has dropped us a line after Keith encountered an even more interestingly rendered version of the name in a mailing from the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (yesterday's Diary). "Grimsbury is a redoubtable area of Banbury, Oxfordshire," he explains, "with a not bad chippy. One wonders whether the Encyclopaedia Britannica's address checker may have been taken aback by the demand of its own publication in Grimsby vis-à-vis Grimsbury, and inserted the latter automatically. P.S. Jermaine Palmer was man of the match in Kettering's recent victory against Lancaster City, according to the local radio." So that's where he is now. Thanks, Andy. But did the local radio spell his name properly?

Have you taken your virtual tour of the Fentydome yet? Did those uninterrupted sight lines make you moist? Good, because the official club Fentybar is unlikely to quench your thirst for a civilised pint. The first observation by one colleague of the Diary's was that 24 cars could be seen in the car park, which would probably turn out to be a fair reflection of the attendances, but one cannot pass comment on the tour without passing comment on its remarkable soundtrack. This is a presumably unlicensed cut from the theme to Star Wars, the idea of which must be to make your Grimbarian chest puff out with pride as you build mental links between the plucky Mariners and the Rebel Alliance, casting King$ton Communication$ FC as the Empire managed by Darth Taylor, but which has just moved Mrs Diary to say: "Is that a piss-take? No? It's the official thing? Hahahahahahaha!"