Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 16 March 2007

16 March 2007

It's the kind of Friday when you wake up to the sound of being castigated for throwing away your tatie peelings and used tea bags. And when you have got over that you end up listening to Yesterday in Parliament and discover that the contingency fund for the London Olympics is now bigger than the original flippin' budget! When they were all shrieking and hugging on the day 'we' got the Olympics we had a competition in our house to guess how much they'd spend to allow us the privilege of hosting a games populated by a bunch of drug-pumped primadonnas. At the time our consensus was fourteen billion quid. So with five years to go we are on track, don't you reckon? Seb Coe was grilled by Peter Levy on Look North the other night and was reduced to trying to justify the whole thing by saying: "Don't worry, I don't come from London. I know what is beyond the M25." He was in Boston at the time, so full marks for turning right off the A1, I suppose. But these east midland centres of excellence are not going to be in Lincolnshire, are they? Geoff Capes never needed 'em, anyroad, and if arm wrestling had got the funding it deserved where would it be now, eh? Eh?

Having used up my Cod Almighty quota of exclamation marks, it is time for your Guest Diarist to move on and discuss weightier matters - like what are the top two Town goalless draws ever? All I can say is they would not have benefited from a scoring competition after the end, would they? And also what are the chances of having Boshell as part of a five-man midfield to fend off the Swindon tide tomorrow? Bosh, as I can't resist calling him, although we are by no means well met, is in possession of the Town ice pack after going over on his ankle in training on Thursday. The Grimsby Telegraph told me this, and also let me in to the great Tony Thorpe secret. It has finally been revealed that the 'veteran frontman' (copyright GT) has had a hamstring injury all this while. And now he has got gastroenteritis. So now we know. Which is a good job because the official site, running the same story about a month late, made a right pig's ear of it as usual.

Lord Buckley has also demonstrated his telepathic powers by knowing that Swindon are third, despite denying he ever reads the league table. But if you believe that tosh from the Telegraph then you are not a Mariners World subscriber. For what the great man actually said is that he looks at the table, but doesn't study it in any detail. It takes a thousand games in managership to get that good. And he will have to be good this week when he writes the teamsheet because the Bore/Till decision 'just gets harder' (copyright Masterchef). Gary Croft has trained all week (no doubt due to an unseasonal downturn in the Grimsby housing market), as has Mr Fenton, whose achilles must have settled down again. Town were on Ceefax twice last night - once with the Reddy fable and the other time to report that Jimmy Hunt has signed up for another month at Town. The Telewag runs the same story, I see, but didn't bother to get a quote from the man about why he won't kiss and make up with his own team.

So an so an in-form team will meet a fairly in-form good team. Are we really in form though? There is a certain, er, fragility about it all, don't you think? And that's why we love 'em. And that's why you should get yersens down to Blundell Park to see what happens after the clapathon. See yer.