Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 10 April 2007

10 April 2007

Great news! When Rob Jones comes back to Blundell Park he won't need a passport!

Hello, readers. You join the Diary this week to find Alan Buckley describing his team's first half showing against Wycombe yesterday as "the poorest 45 minutes I have seen from the lads for a long, long time". The manager's damning verdict - lovingly rendered in today's Grimsby Telegraph as part of a characteristically interesting interview/post-match press conference thing - seems a little harsh to these eyes, as Nick Fenton's two errors were surely all that separated the sides at half time. But then Buckley's Mariners have looked so much the part recently that perhaps we should be disappointed if they could only match a Wycombe side that looked competent but a mere shadow of the slickly oiled football machine that did the double over Town last season. Don't go raising our expectations, now, Alan! People will consider next season a failure if we finish fourth.

While the Diary was away over Easter your emails continued to roll in - well, one did, on Saturday night, in which Rich Mills wrote: "I awoke hungover this morning to hear a punk rock version of 'Sing When We're Fishing' on Radio 5. Was I still drunk?" And was it only alcohol you'd imbibed? Some might think an auditory hallucination of such peculiarity would perhaps have needed a stronger intoxicant - unless they heard it as well, of course. "And Town beat BFSFC," adds Rich, "surely proof that there is a god after all." Indeed, sir, and with another defeat yesterday Bastard Franchise Scum FC are now six points off an automatic promotion place. Less encouraging is the news that Town fans apparently packed in to the National Hockey Stadium on Saturday in their hundreds. With our moral empathy seemingly crippled beyond repair, there's little wonder that the BNP sees Grimsby as a potentially happy hunting ground.

Lastly today, Ben Gresswell has emailed: "Can I just say thanks to Pete Green for yet another excellent match report which made me laugh out loud in the office this morning and brightened up yet another shitty day in the wrist slashingly tedious world of finance." You can, Ben - thanks, and I'm sure Pete's capacity to appreciate these effects of his writing is undiminished by the fact that he has barely done an honest day's work in his life.