Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 5 January 2006

5 January 2006

Now that Glen Downey has more or less proven his existence by scoring the winning goal at Wrexham on New Year's Eve, attention is turning to another local enigma: Tommy Taylor, who has yet to even be named as a first-team substitute since allegedly joining the Mariners in the summer from Viking Stavanger. This most peculiar of signings has returned to the Diary's attention not just because of the air clearing over Downey but also because of a discrepancy between accounts of Tuesday's reserve match in the Grimsby Telegraph and on Town's official website. The OS appears to name our Tom as one of the 15 players who lined up against Huddersfield's stiffs earlier in the week, whereas the local rag swears blind that the Taylor who took on the Terriers was 17-year-old striking prodigy and Duran Duran namealike Andy. Dodgy? Let's just say the Diary will continue to believe that Tommy Taylor is a tax dodge until a left-sided midfielder answering to that name pops up with two forms of identification including a recent utility bill, passport, current driving licence or National Insurance document and scores the winner at Leyton Orient on Easter Monday to seal Town's promotion to the third division.

After Russell Slade was beaten to the fourth division manager of the month award last September by Wycombe's John Gorman, you could have forgiven him for writing the whole MoTM thing off as a bad job - especially since the Mariners had not only racked up more league points than the Chairheads that month but also knocked Spurs out of the League Cup at the same time as Wycombe were shipping eight goals against Aston Villa. The awards continue to look about as credible as FIFA's world rankings system now that Carlisle boss Paul Simpson has pipped our Russ to the December prize, despite his side claiming one point fewer than Town from the same number of games over the course of last month. "Bovvered?" responded Slade this lunchtime.

That's just about it for this week before I hand you over to tomorrow's guest diarist, but let us first take a moment to nominate the Grimsby Telegraph for the 2006 Blundell Park Scoreboard Award for Good Timing. In a time when the local football club continues, from a financial point of view, to drift along Shit Creek with little in the way of propulsion, and when its chairman is forced to publicly beg fans to come and support their local side instead of whichever big London or Lancashire club has the most money this year, the Telegraph has chosen a perfect moment to run a piece of marketing copy for the Premiership. I'm sorry, but haven't you people got illegal fox hunts to go to?