Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 13 November 2006

13 November 2006

Hello and welcome to today's Buckley - or, as it was previously known, the Diary. Passing? Movement? Isn't it? Town's new old manager has celebrated his side's marvellous performance in drawing 0-0 at Northampton on Saturday by pulling on his boots for the club's Chairman's Challenge match yesterday. The game - which takes place to raise funds for something or other, I think, possibly just the club, I can't quite remember - belied the latter days of Buckley's previous spell at Blundell Park by yielding 16 goals in all (nine for the GTFC XI and seven for the sponsors), and a report on the club's official website depicts the manager showing Luton's Michael Reddy how to win a penalty by diving and make it look convincing. The photographs are credited to Mark Fenty, proving that if you can rely on a Buckley regime for proper passing football and a refusal to consider employing non-British players, you are also guaranteed rampant nepotism.

Should Buckley's FA Cup battlers overcome the Cobblers in their replay a week tomorrow - an occasion that is promising to be not a little rousing, if not arousing - their reward will be a second-round visit to Barnet, who currently sit two points and two places above Town in the fourth division league table. The tie is scheduled for Saturday 2 December and pits the Bees against Lincolnshire opposition for a second consecutive round after they claimed a late win on Saturday at Gainsborough Trinity of the Conference North. The match could also see the Mariners line up against Paul Warhurst, who formed part of GTFC's infamous Law's Losers side in 2004 and has made 13 league starts for Barnet this year - more than twice the number he managed for Town, Stoke, Chesterfield, Barnsley, Carlisle, Blackpool, Wrexham and Forest Green, if you want to go into unnecessarily painful detail about his record since leaving Bolton in 2003.

Any old how, the tickets for next Tuesday are now on sale: it says so on the OS, but thanks to John Ide for emailing to tell us in the meantime.

"So the sour-faced dwarf is back?" begins another email to the Diary, this time from Ben Gresswell. "All I want to know is who the other 'numerous' applicants were? And what's with the unfinished business crap? I guess only time will tell but if we don't get promoted and win the FA Cup this season, it will be proof that Fenty has made yet another bad decision. Booo, sort it Mum!" Confirming that he is in a satirical mode, Ben then asks: "Oh, and another thing, when is the new stadium going to be finished?"

Today's final word is from Guest Diary - or, more accurately, from Emily Dickinson, since it is this enigmatic American poet into whose work GD has dipped for some thoughts that sum up the return of Mr Alan B. "Good ol' Emily - words for every occasion," enthuses Guest. See you tomorrow, all.

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.