Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 27 August 2007

27 August 2007

The pessimistic among Grimsby Town supporters are talking about Alan Buckley's teams failing to beat inferior opposition and, despite a switch to a supposedly more 'positive' 4-4-2 system, dull tactics. The optimistic among Grimsby Town supporters - or, to put it another way, the Cod Almighty team - are talking about an entertaining game in which the Mariners played plenty of attractive football and at least had a lot of shots to miss from this time. Both sets of fans would probably agree, after another 1-1 draw on Saturday against a Macclesfield side that should have been dead and buried by half time, that signing a new striker would be quite good, and in this they are joined by Lord Buckley himself, who has declared his intention to do just that before that stupid transfer window closes, um, soon, is it the end of this week? "We can't go and sign a Mido and we can't go and sign a Bent but there's got to be players out there who are within our means," says the Town boss, finally exasperated at his team for having scored just once from their 18 attempts. "We keep knocking it down into good areas and nobody is a 'Johnny on the spot' to put it in the net," adds Buckley, carefully avoiding the term 'fox in the box' after the effect it had on Francis Jeffers.

Having watched footage of Macclesfield's goal several times, incidentally, the Diary is still none the wiser as to whether Justin Whittle is correct in claiming that the visitors' free kick had run over Town's goal line before it was pulled back for Martin Gritton's tap-in. I am impressed by Gritton's apparent reluctance to celebrate scoring against his former club, however, and not at all prepared to accept the alternative explanation that the player was just too lazy to raise his arms and run.

As sure as the sun rises in the morning and Mark Lawrenson says "I don't think there's any doubt about that" twelve times a minute, the work of my occasional stand-in Deviant Diary can be guaranteed to daze and confuse unwary readers with its dazzling wordplay and esoteric references to rubbish TV, films and music from the 1970s. So it is that Ben Gresswell emailed the Diary after reading DD's uniquely styled round-up of Mariners news last Wednesday to request "a double dose of whatever Deviant Diary is taking please!" As anyone who knows him will confirm, however, Deviant Diary is simply high on life. And passing and movement.

Eve Barnard, who emailed the Diary in similar confusion at a non-drug-crazed Deviant rampage several weeks ago, has been in touch again, having found on eBay a copy of the teamsheet from Town's friendly against the Japanese national team in 1971 (the auction ends at 3:51 this afternoon, so get your bid on, collectors!). "Do you or any of your readers know what the score was?" she asks. Thanks for that, Eve - I seem to think Town won by some crazy big score, but we'll be relying on the readers to email and tell us exactly what it was.