Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 6 March 2007

6 March 2007

A sombre beginning for today's Diary with the news that the long-time chairman of Town's official supporters' club, Bernard Morley, died yesterday at the age of 80. When you consider that Bernard ran those coaches to away games for more than two decades, it adds up to a huge amount of support at a huge number of games, which would clearly have made a huge overall difference to many individual fans and the club as a whole. So a sad loss for the Mariners community, but one that follows a lot of good work. Bernard was widely described as a nice bloke - and he was quite clearly a great supporter as well.

The good form of Town's young-ish reserve side continues to suggest better days ahead for the club, the second string having extended their current unbeaten run with a straightforward 3-0 win over Lincoln at Blundell Park yesterday afternoon. "Hegarty should have made it three," reports the club's official website shortly after describing how Peter Till had already made it three. Till also opened the scoring, and between his two strikes the aerobically developmental Isaiah Rankin lashed one in from 25 yards. Trialists Ben Gill and Scott Lycett played the full 90, and the Diary has received notes on the latter from a watcher of Leicester's youth academy. "Scott's a smashing player in many ways. Focused, brave, determined, a forceful cajoler of team-mates in a constructive way, always involved, a decent footballer who can support and use the ball well, reasonable reader of the game and an altogether good guy to have around. Scott's problem is that, for a centre-back or defensive midfield player, he is not the tallest, biggest or strongest and that can cause him problems at times, not only at the back but because he's not likely to add to your goals tally at set pieces and these things all count." As we know, though, Alan Buckley's teams were always noted for topping the fair play league, and hence the current Mariners side would never do anything so unsportsmanlike as score from a set piece.

Town have published travel and ticket information for this weekend's trip to Hereford, which reveals that the Bulls' official email is a Hotmail address. Aw, bless! Details of the nearest McDonalds to Edgar Street are conspicuous by their welcome absence - though the Mariners are still encouraging you to quaff fizzy pop by the bucketload, promising a great prize and the title 'Superfan' to the supporter who necks the unhealthiest quantity of Coca-Cola between now and whenever. And until the Fentydome's fitness facilities arrive, of course, the people of North East Lincolnshire have no way to get themselves healthy. It's something or other gone mad, probably.

Last up today it's an email from Ben Gresswell. "Just wanted to say how delighted I was to hear that Sharon Codd is actually a real person," he writes. "I was even more delighted to read that she is double D. Let's hope we see a lot more of Sharon on Cod Almighty in the future!" Uh-oh.