Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 15 August 2007

15 August 2007

"We've played some flipping really, really good football tonight!" Town may have turned in their best performance for years in last night's 1-1 draw with Burnley in the League Cup (won by the Clarets on penalties, like that wasn't predictable after extra time), but it is perhaps Lord Alan Buckley who steals the show in his post-match press-conference, shown on Mariners World. The Diary's favourite among several gems put forward by the Town boss is his response to a question about the players' impressive level of fitness. "Higher up the leagues you go, you can get nutritionists, and dieticians, and fitness coaches," muses Buckley, weighing every word. "And we've been at Cheapside for five weeks and we look like that!" It was clear that bringing back the most successful manager in the history of the club would lead to an improvement on the pitch, but GTFC officials must be rubbing their hands in glee at having also found something that makes Mariners World worth subscribing to. Look - the superb new official website even has a professionally written match report!

Two Diary readers have emailed with their views on Town's new broadcasting partner Last Resort FM, the radio station only reluctantly given a local franchise by Ofcom because all the other bidders were even worse. "Greetings from north Norfolk," writes David Elvidge, who confesses to not having attended the Notts County game because Marty Wilde and the Wildcats were playing in Hunstanton ("they were great"). David observes: "Radio coverage for Town fans in my location has gone west (geddit?). I have tried to get Compass, but as I suspected, FM coverage does not extend to Hunstanton. To piss me off even more, 1485MW is better since we moved from King's Lynn to Hunstanton, yet what do I get? David Burns greeting me with 'Radio Humberside - your Championship radio station!' Town hardly got a mention in the first half hour, but then they did generously give John Tondeur all of 30 seconds. After that I gave up. But to be fair to Humberside, they are not going to give Town much coverage if Mr Fenty has decided to go with Compass. In these circumstances does it mean the squad now includes 'Magnetic' North (geddit?)." Ha! And after last night, I'm sure he'd be voted the club's best striker in a web 'pole'!

The second of today's emails about t' wireless is from Clav Divs, who writes: "You can receive a crackling version [of Last Resort FM] beyond Caistor, reminiscent of Radio Caroline, but that would not have helped on Saturday, 'cos they only broadcast away games (don't want to keep any more from going to BP - smart thinking John!). Update next week. However, if you were lucky enough to be listening into Radio Humbleside after the game on Saturday, you would have been delighted to hear disgruntled Hully Gullies whingeing about 'yet another crap performance', and then Burnsy himself (responding to a Cod Almighty text message) revealed his great admiration and respect for that pinnacle of football fanzines - Cod Almighty! High praise indeed." Indeed! But what we really need to know is whether, despite the lack of Town commentary on Humberside, there's still one call from a Town fan to the Football Forum on Saturday teatimes, and that one caller says they didn't go to the match but Town were crap and they're bound to bring in far inferior replacements when they sell Rob Jones and Luton's Michael Reddy during the January transfer window.