Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 19 February 2008

19 February 2008

Now... do I wait for the results of the pitch inspection at half past one and then write a quick Diary to try and make the 2pm target for publication, or do I start now and carry on as if the game is going ahead, and then wait for the pitch inspection result and just add it on at the end, giving a 'real time' narrative effect? It's a tough call in these heady days of competition from citizen journalists and outsourced Indian call centres. But we'll go for the latter, I think. The Diary's spicy squash and red lentil soup can cook away in the meantime.

Undeterred by the fact that Town bombed appallingly on Saturday as a direct, verifiable result of everyone starting to talk about the play-offs, the Grimsby Telegraph has put a hex on the Mariners ahead of tonight's hoped-for Dulux Cup clash at Morecambe by running a whole bunch of stuff about playing in the final at Wembley on 30 March. This unpromising situation is not helped by the continuing thigh strain of Danny Boshell, who may be joined on the sidelines by Tom Newey, who has a poorly toe. The Telewag points out that one option available to Lord Buckley would be to recall Justin Whittle, who has played about ten minutes of first-team football since Town knocked Doncaster out of the tournament way back in mid-November. This would at least mean Peter Till could stay up in the hole, as Ryan Bennett wouldn't be needed in the back three and could step in to the right wing-back slot to replace Sam Hird (who played against Town for Doncaster that night) instead of Till having to do it. Got all that? Never mind; the pitch will probably be frozen and the game put back a week, so it doesn't matter.

Morecambe are doing their best to get the match on tonight, though - probably after seeing the way Town performed without Boshell last weekend - and have brought in some giant hairdryers to try and defrost the pitch. Insert your own joke here about they could have saved a lot of money by standing Buckley in the centre circle and asking him to demonstrate one of the half-time team talks he gives when his side is two-nil down at home and he's made two substitutions before half an hour was played.

You probably didn't know we try to publish the Diary by 2pm at the latest, did you? It's true, although we suspect that Durham Diary misread the instructions the first time he appeared as a Friday stand-in and has carried on in the belief that 2pm was actually the target for getting out of bed.

Grimsby Town supporters would expect, on reading the headline Macca rolls back the years, to be reading another story about our revered, retired and record-breaking right-back Sir John McDermott. Today, though, we would be wrong, as Morecambe's local paper The Citizen uses precisely those words to introduce a very short piece about their elderly goalkeeping coach being named as a substitute for tonight's match, if it happens. Steve McIlhargey, who is 46 and whose name I can't even guess at how to pronounce, could be on the very cold bench at Christie Park as the Shrimpers' first-choice keeper Shwan Jalal is cup-tied and their regular sub Scott Davies will start the match. He doesn't look anything like 46 in that photo though. I must find out which moisturiser he uses.

Oh, and they didn't even need to do the 1:30 inspection - the match is off already. Great news for Town - as long as Bosh gets well soon...