Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 15 April 2008

15 April 2008

"The play-offs may be out of reach but people are still paying to come and watch us and it's up to us to perform." You said it, Lord Alan Buckley! The Diary empathises strongly with Town's heroic team manager ahead of tonight's kickaround against Wycombe, as it must be a forlorn task trying to motivate a team that no longer has a chance of promotion. Let's face it - he seemed to have enough trouble motivating them when they still did have a chance of promotion.

So will there be anything worth seeing at Blundell Park this evening? Matthew Bird watchers will have their binoculars focused on the groin of Rob Atkinson, because with Ryan Bennett away on England under-18 duty, Town's 17-year-old centre-back could make a full debut if the Barnsley loanee fails to recover from the injury that has recently afflicted him in that area. And young Matty will have to be on his mettle if he does, as Buckley's assessment of the Chairboys in today's Grimsby Telegraph fully acknowledges. "You just look at the lad Scott McGleish who has 25 goals this season, which is fantastic. They are still fighting for promotion and that may bring out the best in us," says the manager, clutching frantically at a nearby packet of straws.

"HOPEFULLY we will have some news regarding Grimsby Town's proposed new stadium at Great Coates this Thursday," says the briefest of news items on Town's superb new official website today, leaving the Diary uncertain as to whether the SNOS has suddenly started observing the stylistic convention of newspapers to render the first word of a story in capital letters or is just hedging its bets. You can have 250/1 on Ikea coming in as anchor retail tenant, 33/1 on B&Q, 5/2 on Mad Harry or even money on another announcement later.

Rob McIlveen has been following links from the Diary again, still isn't happy with what he finds, and has emailed again to jolly well say so. "Idle Theory just has to be the work of sixth formers who scraped five grade Cs, and are only staying in education because Blair/Brown is paying them to do so. It's that, or you're a mischievous bugger who's anticipating a slow news day, and you know that some of your readers will follow your links and be sent apopleptic by them!" Rob, you're such a pushover! But isn't every day a slow news day with the Mariners right now? "Well, this regular reader demands the Dairy himself explains what is remotely interesting about this: 'Idle Theory is an exploration. It does not pretend to be either complete or authoritative. It doesn't even claim to be right.' Come on Dairy, sort it for them. They clearly don't know what they fuck they're talking about." Possibly not - but nor does the Dairy, for that matter, and unlike me at least they're not pretending otherwise. Anyone fancy a yoghurt?

Finally today, literally one of you has emailed on the subject of Cod Almighty's proposed expansion to our range of quality apparel. "Yes, dear Diary, I think a 'Sarge' T-shirt would be great," writes Ben Gresswell. "Just as long as there is some sort of reference to him battering Shearer on it. I hate that Geordie bastard." Thanks for being our focus group, Ben - watch this space.