Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 28 August 2007

28 August 2007

It may have just been a one-off when Town's superb new official website directed fans travelling to a pre-season friendly at Gainsborough to Southport - but today the SNOS is putting supporters through an online odyssey of comparable tortuousness. "TICKETS for Town's first trip to Shrewsbury's New Meadow stadium this Saturday are available on the day," reads a page on the site. "Click here for tickets and travel news." So you click there and reach a second page. "Prices for the Mariners first trip to the New Meadow, Shrewsbury are as follows," it says. And, er, that's it. A bit later, when you roll your mouse over the picture of two kids on the page, and the arrow pointer turns into a hand and you realise it's another link and figure what the hell, you might as well click on it and see what happens, you reach a third page which finally tells you all about Shrewsbury's shit new ground (with some copy lifted from the Internet Football Ground Guide; still, at least it's acknowledged). The title of this page is "Away Fans | Grimsby Town | Tickets | Away Tickets | Away Tickets". I don't know about you, but after all that I feel a bit too knackered to actually go to Shrewsbury.

The Grimsby Telegraph is having a better day, with a jolly little piece about some Norwegian Town fans who made it across the sea for last Saturday's draw with Macclesfield and a pretty good interview with Stuart Watkiss ahead of the reserves' first game at home to Hartlepool tomorrow afternoon. Town's assistant manager, of course, transformed the fortunes of the Mariners' second string last season and deserves enormous credit for the quick development of many of the club's current crop of promising youngsters. Whether he will get it is another matter, as most Grimbarians would prefer to dwell upon Watkiss's brief spell in charge of Kidderminster, when the club was relegated from the Football League, even though you could have put Alex Ferguson in charge of that team and resurrected Bill Shankly as his assistant and they'd still have gone down. Anticipating the 'bigger' clubs the reserves will face this season, Watkiss says: "The young players should be excited about going to places like Elland Road, Hillsborough and Oakwell." This is assuming the likes of Dirty Leeds and Big Wednesday actually play second-string games at their own grounds, of course, and aren't among those jumped-up, pumped-up, self-important Premiership wannabes whose turf is far too precious and delicate to let the likes of Grimsby reserves trample all over it.

Speaking of Norwegian Town fans - and it's not that often the Diary is able to begin a paragraph thus - Jostein Jensen has emailed the Diary with details on Town's 1971 friendly against Japan, as requested yesterday by Eve Barnard. GTFC led 2-1 at half time with goals from Jack Lewis and Matt Tees, eventually expanding their winning margin to 7-2 as Mike Hickman ran in a second-half hat-trick and Geoff Hart added two more. Japan's goals were both scored by a fella called Kamaoto, and the attendance was 3,353. Thanks, Jostein! Hickman's exploits were all the more impressive given that the teamsheet - which ended up selling for £27.10 - appears to name him as Town's substitute. Ah, those dim and distant days of only having one substitute, of Town beating the entire Japanese national team instead of just the goalkeeper, and of sub-4,000 attenda... oh.

"Dear You Lot," begins an email from Pete 'impsTALK' Brooksbank. "Quick note to say I'm loving the 'The Day Today' reference ["Fact into doubt won't go"] on the Macclesfield factfile headline. And that's despite the fact I found it not half as funny as I remember it when I purchased the DVD box set a year or so ago (although I do still reel off 'he's got a foot like a traction engine' with tedious regularity to bored friends). Good work." Thanks! We're relieved somebody got it. "Incidentally, these sunny blue skies I've seen over Nottingham over the last few days: is it our renowned British summer belatedly sneaking in through the back door to show its face, like a bloke at a party who clearly doesn't want to be there? Or is it actually the ionisation of higher levels of the Earth's atmosphere caused by Last Resort FM irradiating a few more of its problems? I think we all know the answer. Now, where did I leave my lead apron...?" Cuh - just when Town thought we were getting over the radio thing, the fallout continues...