Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 5 September 2007

5 September 2007

Well, well. Lord Alan Buckley's negative tippy-tappy football seems to have accidentally thrashed an opposing team expected to make the running in a higher division. What are we going to do now, eh? Since the end of the game last night the Diary has read about a dozen match reports on Town's 4-1 thumping of Huddersfield in the Football League Trophy, and if there's one thing more surprising than the Mariners scoring a load of goals, it's the excellent account of the match that appeared on the superb new official website about half an hour after the final whistle. Sadly the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, which used to be a good paper, seems to have degenerated into the tabloid-style use of paragraph breaks after every sentence because that's all the attention span and intelligence they're prepared to credit their readers with. Here at Cod Almighty, though, our favourite response to the result came from no-nonsense Buckley himself, who, when asked on Mariners World whether his side will kick on from here and mete out a comparable tonking to Accrington this Saturday, said simply: "How do I know, Dale?" Grimsby fans will never respect plain speaking, Al; you'll have to work on the flannel if you want to be as popular as Lennie Lawrence.

The only note of sadness to sound from last night's sumptuous symphony goes something like this: one, two, a-one-two-zero-four. Even so, the paltry attendance of 1,204 is no worse than those recorded in the early rounds of the same competition in the past two seasons and - whisper it - in the 1997-98 tournament. One of those happy few was Sibbo, whose email to the Diary is entitled "It Started With A Piss". "After two pints before the game," he writes, "I needed the loo just as Nick Fenton decided to equalise for Town, only moments before half time. Never mind, eh. Three more goals sealed victory and we all went home happy. Dave Mulligan looked very solid at right-back and Town thoroughly deserved to be in the next round. We're such a better team to watch and I'm sure our league position will improve." Have we even got a league position yet? Back in the day the media never even used to publish tables until about five games in, did they?

Sibbo's not finished there though. "On the way home from the game," he adds, "my mate Maurice, who started watching the Mariners long before I did, told me that a goalkeeper in past years was about to take the field in a green jersey. He was quickly told to change it, as the colour green is not a good omen for mariners. Have you heard of this superstition?" Heard of it? Why, the Diary hosted a lengthy discussion on precisely this topic as recently as May 2003; scroll down to the entry for Wednesday 7 May and then read upwards. Ooh, blimey - remember all that about the Jarvis bloke who went missing? I wonder if he's turned up yet...