Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 4 April 2007

4 April 2007

While Ciaran Toner ums and ahs, Danny Boshell is about to dot the 'i's and cross the 't's. It may be the former Northern Ireland international who has commanded headline space with five goals in the last two months, but Town's improved form in that time is at least as much due to Boshell's contribution from central midfield - and as Toner stalls over extending his contract, Dan the man has agreed terms to stay at Blundell Park until 2009. In marked contrast to the careful ambiguities Toner delivered yesterday, Bosh sounds grin-inducingly enthusiastic in today's Grimsby Telegraph, declaring himself "really happy" to be remaining a Mariner. Boshell may often have been absent from the side a few months back, and the Diary may be a sentimental old fool, but at this moment I'm struggling to imagine a more credible candidate for player of the season.

Following the financial unease of recent years, GTFC have been forced to auction off just about everything Tony Richardson could think of and more besides, from a token place in the playing squad for a season to a unique set of commemorative plates. The club's latest eBay venture is the sale of what the official website is calling a 1990-91 "Promotion Winning Signed Ball" - and though credit may be due to the inflated spherical object in question, this designation seems to overlook the important contribution made by the players themselves to Town's great triumph of that season. I say "inflated", but the ball seems to have gone down quicker than a team managed by Nicky Law.

Rob Jones is quite liderally the biggest thing to come out of Grimsby for many a long year, and barely a week goes by without the Scottish press swooning fanatically over another of his - heh! - towering performances for Hibernian, the club Jones left Blundell Park for last summer. Having seemingly run out of nice things to say about his defensive ability, attitude, goalscoring, leadership, and capacity to win cups single-handedly, the Scotsman newspaper has this week found a new quality for which to praise the player: he isn't a cheat. The fact that an editor considers this story newsworthy seems to reflect both the astonishing new levels of Stickmania being reached north of the border and the appalling depths of cynicism being plumbed by professional football in 2007 ("Soccer world stunned as player admits not cheating"). "Some people have said I should go down, but that is not in my character," says Jones, who is expected shortly to be awarded the freedom of the city of Edinburgh, have the local airport renamed in his honour, and put forward to Pope Benedict XVI for imminent canonisation.