Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 7 March 2008

7 March 2008

So, folks, the week has worked itself round to Friday and Town fans everywhere have to face up to the twin evils of Friday night football and a home game against those Bastard Franchise Scum. Opposition awash with cash and drunk with success spawned from evil deeds. Tonight's game is important to Town: we need to redeem ourselves from a poor display in the corresponding away fixture when we conceded straight from the kick-off and never really got back in it; and we need three home points to keep alive those faint hopes of others failing in the last quarter of the season and allowing us to squeeze in to the play-offs.

Your Guest Diarist is a stubborn man whom more than once has come to regret taking principled stands - one of them being never to watch the BFS live in case they noticed and thus thought the world was coming round to their amoral way of thinking. At present I feel like a Methodist watching his mates file into the pub on a Friday night. I need to hum a hymn or two and stay strong. Never been a Christian, but I do like a good hymn, I must admit. And yes, I do have Sky, so what does that say about me, eh? A teetotal Methodist with a tattered picture of Fiona Richmond under his bed, the headstone will no doubt read.

Lord Buckley spent yesterday morning bollocking cajoling his squad down from cloud nine and preparing them for said important match. Mr Hunt's groin was sore but he trained anyway, while Danny North's problem is the back of his knee. A part of the body that nobody appears to have been arsed enough about to name. Buckley rates North as 50:50 for tonight and has also reaffirmed that Toner is a week away from being in contention for a first-team place.

AB, in his far from subtle campaign to keep notorious Grimsby heterosexual Peter Bore on his toes, observed in a dangerous but outwardly mild tone that Mr Bore had failed to impress when coming on as a sub the other night. He said no more, and he said no less. That was enough. Lord Buckley, of course, was chatting to Mariners World, and he also remarked that wholesale changes to the team tonight should not be expected. So that has scuppered another excuse to go tonight ("might this be Whittle's last home game?" the devil on my shoulder has been whispering, you see).

At this point one side of me wants to urge you, gentle reader, to boycott games like this. But that twisted logic can be ripped apart in so many different ways that perhaps we should leave it that you go and cheer the Town on while I wear that really prickly jumper me nanna knitted for me and sit there cursing and shaking my fist at the evil Sky Sports News. That'll do it. Let's hope for three points against this most despicable of opposition, with no injuries, no bookings or worse, and the chance to keep dreaming about those play-offs. Knowing my luck, though, we'll end up playing the Bastard Franchise Scum (who will somehow have slipped to fourth) again. See yer.