Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 18 February 2008

18 February 2008

The Diary spent much of the weekend after Saturday teatime in a state of contentment, despite the Mariners' 4-1 drubbing by Football League n00bz Dagenham & Redbridge just before Saturday teatime. "See it in context," I told myself. "Town are still on a brilliant run of eight wins and three draws in the last twelve games." Which is true. But is this sort of optimism a kind of self-delusion as well as a denial of my miserable Grimbarian heritage? With no right-back in the squad now that Sam Hird has returned to Doncaster, and the Boshless midfield collapsing like a north-eastern building society overstretched in the sub-prime loans market, are Lord Buckley's players about to return to the lower reaches of the fourth division as dramatically as they hauled themselves out of it? I dunno, but after the disgraceful absence of motoring metaphors from the Grimsby Telegraph's match report when Town played Dagenham last month, David Pye has mercifully obliged this time, averring that "Town had not even found first gear while their first-time visitors to Cleethorpes were in cruise control". And Hird was blowing a gasket, of course.

"It's now sometime after 5pm on Saturday," writes John Pakey in an email to the Diary. "I've just read your entry for Friday. Bloody typical, you tempt Fate with a big old stick and look what happens!? If we spiral out of control now and finish in the mire of the bottom half I'm blaming you and not the players or Alan Buckley!" Sounds fair enough to me. In Mat Hare's search for positives, meanwhile, he is forced to look at the finer detail of Guest Diary's latest work. "Thanks GD!" he enthuses. "Stevedoring is a great word, and one I didn't really know before I read Friday's Diary and then looked up said word. I feel educated in the ways of GTFC and loading/unloading cargo ships. Where else on the web can you get that, eh?" We can only hope Mat manages to preserve this sunny outlook by completely forgetting to look at the score from Saturday.

In the last of today's emails Bedders corrects the date given in Thursday's Diary for Town's horrible defeat at Scunthorpe the other year. "Just for the record it was 6 November 2004, not 6 October," he writes. "I know this to be true as this disturbing event took place on my birthday." Ooof. Have any other Diary readers had their birthdays ruined by really crap results for the Mariners? Email and let us know!

And finally, Cod Almighty would like to recommend a brand new messageboard - and Grimsby & Cleethorpes Takeaway Discussion seems to the Diary an eminently sensible idea, at least for as long as it manages to avoid postings such as "booooo sak the fryer" and "no ambishun no clue no kebabz".