Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 22 February 2007
22 February 2007
Grimsby Town's annual campaign to try and persuade the nearby football-watching population to support their local team - instead of laughably trying to convince themselves they care about groups of irrelevant millionaires strolling through the motions on TV - has been going pretty well this year. Free coach travel to Mansfield last weekend saw more than 1,300 Grimbarians cheering their side on to a precious away win, and promotions for the last two home games, against Bristol Rovers and Wrexham, have almost doubled the attendances at Blundell Park from their lowest recent ebb, with the boosted ranks of fans again inspiring the players to victory, once the crowd had a few dodgy refereeing decisions to give them something to moan about and start making some noise. The rallying cry continues for the Mariners' next home game against Bury a week on Saturday, when under-16s will be allowed into any stand for just one pound provided that they are accompanied by an adult paying full price. "1081 Kids took advantage of the Vice-Versa promotion and came into the [Wrexham] game free of charge," announces the club's official website excitedly, managing to spell 'Vice Versa' correctly this time, albeit inserting an unnecessary hyphen, beginning 'Kids' with an initial capital letter for no reason at all, and totally confusing everyone even more by saying kids when they mean adults.
Of course, Town's official website isn't the only place where people get things wrong. After years of being lambasted by the Diary on an almost daily basis for its appalling attempts to create online GTFC news items from the content of Radio Humberside's morning sports bulletin, the BBC Humber website eventually gave up and started just linking to stories on the main BBC Sport site instead of trying to write their own. The Diary, in turn, stopped looking at the site - until this morning, that is, when I dropped by again as part of a sustained campaign of work avoidance. Sure enough, the Humber web team were still conducting a little work avoidance of their own, but even then they had still contrived to drop a spectacular bollock by adding the text "The Mariners' winning run continues with victory in Wales" below a link to the report on Town's win against Wrexham on Tuesday night - which, of course, took place very much in Cleethorpes. Ho hum.
And even the big bods at the BBC's main sport site get it wrong sometimes, as this snippet emailed to the Diary last night by Mike Dunderdale illustrates. No sooner had Town got their breath back from the win over Wrexham than Auntie had them lining up against Chester. "I know we're hoping that the good run continues and that we could play anyone, anytime, but for the BBC to offer Chester vs Grimsby tonight is a bit much to hope for," pleads Mike.
Fans of interesting footballer names would have been delighted, no doubt, to learn earlier this month that the future is bright at Blundell Park, with Town's under-11s side including Ellis Humble and Mackenzie De Vries among their number. Fans of people having surnames where a first name should be will be equally excited to note from today's Grimsby Telegraph that the side also boasts a Robson Burnett and a Cole Mills. Young William Mumby-Croft is believed to be considering renaming himself Mumby-Croft William in a bid to hold down his place in the side.
There's just time for one more crazy paragraph before I hand over to tomorrow's guest diarist, and what with Ken Andrews emailing to have a go yesterday, and Joseph Mooney taking a swipe at my taste in beer today ("Willy's beer? Eurgh! Tom Woods or Batemans maybe. I feel ill just thinking about it"), it seems to be open season on the Diary. It's all the better, then, just before I bid you cheerio for the week, to have received an email clearly inspired by love rather than hate. "Hi, dear. I am glad you are reading my letter," writes Olchik. "I decided to send you a mail and invite you to build relationships with me. I am a woman who wants to create a loving family, have children, live in love and happiness. I will give all my tenderness I have in my heart to the man who will be my husband. Do you want to build relationships with me? Kiss-kiss, Olchik." Er, well, I dunno about that, love, but if you'll take 200 a week in cash, no questions asked, you could probably get a trial with Boston.