Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Friday 2 May 2008
2 May 2008
Grimsby Town centre-half Nick Fenton has paid the ultimate price for the frankly daft shorn-sheep look he adopted for the last home game of the season. Manager Buckley has took agin 'im and told the inconsistent chap to take his haircut and find employment elsewhere. Fenton, when he has a good game, is a good defender at this level. Unfortunately there are not enough good days and there is also a tendency to be bullied by certain strikers. Buckley's recent forebodings about needing defenders "who will stick their head in" must mean he is now in the market for signings as he has also effectively told Justin Whittle to retire.
Cod Almighty likes to take the positive, as regular readers of our post-match factfile will know; the loss of Fenton will force the club into a new set piece strategy to replace the one that ignores the likes of Butler and Jones, preferring to try in vain to find the head of Nick Fenton. The strike rate from free kicks can only go up - especially as Lord Buckley has had the good sense to dump Ciaran Toner at the same time.
Toner is another frustrating footballer; he shows great promise and will no doubt point towards his international caps to prove it, but a seeming inability to control the ball under pressure coupled with an indifferent attitude to hard work combined to make him a considerably less than popular player with both fans and team mates. Your Guest Diarist makes this last assertion not on the basis of ever having spoken to a Town player (never meet your heroes, gentle reader: they are prone to disappoint) but purely on the basis of having witnessed angry conversations on the field of play on a regular basis. Actually I realise that I did speak to a Town player once when I helped to receive a shirt from Disco Des Hamilton on behalf of Cod Almighty. Perhaps understandably my mind continues to try to blot this episode out. As a by the way, there has been talk at Cod Almighty towers of taking this shirt to a desolate place, consuming vast amounts of alcohol and then setting fire to it to the accompaniment of optional crazy dancing. But I digress.
In a very positive move to follow the award of a proper one-year contract to Nathan Jarman, the club has taken up the option to extend the contract of promising striker Andy Taylor to May 2010. So the club has an embarrassment of young striker prospects and a couple of old warhorses, an absence of anyone who can boss midfield or act as an attacking playmaker, two bloody good goalies, and two apprentice centre-halves. Oh, and Tom Newey, who must be feeling like an X-Factor contestant, and has realised this week that there are two big names worse than him. I mean no disrespect to Peter Till, but you can't build your team around a winger can you?
Lord Buckley has given a free Mariners World interview where he explains more, but my fancy new PC blankly ignores it, which is frustrating, to put it mildly.
If Town are to sell many early season tickets for the next campaign, Chairman Councillor the vaguely honourable John Fenty (con) will need to talk turkey about his playing budget for Buckley next season very soon. The superb new official site has tugged its forelock about his election victory and promised that the great leader will deign to be interviewed for the site on Saturday, where he will no doubt make more empty promises about the new stadium and explain how easy it is to devote all his energies at all times to both his constituents in Humberston and New Waltham and to single-handedly ensure that GTFC are successful in the league and successfully move to a completely unaffordable new stadium in a recessionary economic climate. Phew, I'm out of breath after that last sentence - luckily politician John has lots of hot air left, I'm sure. See yer.
International Workers' Day
The player formerly known as lardy striker Nathan Jarman has won himself a deal to stay at Blundell Park next season with a recent string of promising performances up front and a crash diet. The new slimline Jarman has impressed as a lone forward in Town's last few matches - without quite managing a goal, naturally, but with bags of technique and awareness and the possibility to reach parts other strikers don't reach - and has followed up his two Cod Almighty man of the match awards by scooping a one-year contract to remain a Mariner for the 2008-09 campaign. It's great to see a player who has worked hard rewarded for his efforts, and it'll be even better to see him notch his first goal in black and white in Town's disappointing 1-1 draw at home to Macclesfield on the opening day of next season.
Shortly after Blundell Park's languid communications department was forced to deny that the Mariners would play in a summer friendly tournament in Devon when their participation was rumoured in the West Country media, Town fans continue to rely on other clubs for details of their side's pre-season programme. Third division Oldham yesterday completed their official announcements of their five friendly games this summer by revealing that they will cross the Pennines for a kickabout against our beloved Mariners on Saturday 19 July. Members of the Cod Almighty editorial team are currently being assigned 28 clubs each, spanning the length and breadth of Britain, whose official websites they will be checking on an hourly basis for further news of Grimsby Town fixtures.
Outgoing GTFC captain Justin Whittle is outgoing not just in the sense that he is about to leave the club after four years of sterling service but also in that he is not notably shy - at least not if today's Diary trawl of online Town news is owt to go by. In a Grimsby Telegraph interview the no-nonsense centre-half expresses disappointment that he wasn't offered terms to stay with the club next season, insisting: "I know I can still do a job and the legs haven't gone completely yet," while in a Q&A thingy on Town's superb new official website Whitts exacts his revenge by opening Lord Alan Buckley's closet and exposing a skeleton in the exact shape of tedious, plodding, corporate MOR car radio rock. Asked who at the club has the worst taste in music, the player has no hesitation in naming his manager as "the worst by some distance. All we ever catch hi[m] listening to is Chris Rea." Boooo, Buckley out!
"Hello Diary!" begins an an email from our mate Pete Brooksbank, sounding remarkably cheery for a Boston fan in 2008. What's going on? "Well, it looks as though it's finally the end for Tony Crane at Boston United. The big lad trudged away from York Street at the end of our final game of the season last Saturday without ceremony after sitting out the entire game. He's not actually started for weeks now - he's been benched because he's apparently not bothering to show for training which, for a lad of his build, you would imagine to be fairly crucial. Indeed, Crane's grim end-of-season slump was confirmed when he failed to land a single award, and this after I confidently predicted a clean sweep after his early season form. Gah! It's a terrible shame since, in spells, he really was a class apart. Alas, his attitude stank and I doubt we'll see old Crazy Legs in the amber and black again. Anyway, here's to a rather more successful '08-09 for both our teams. It seems we've been saved from the scrapheap, so I guess that means another nine-hour trip to Workington awaits." That's the spirit! Thanks Pete, and I hope you'll keep emailing us despite the lack of GTFC-related wasters on the books at York Street. I don't suppose the Pilgrims would fancy Straight Peter Bore on a season-long loan?
Before Guest Diary steps once more unto the breach tomorrow, the last item this season from your regular Diary is a little nugget of important information that has emerged as a result of today's local elections. As you know, a figure strongly connected with GTFC is running in the Humberston & New Waltham ward. What you probably don't know, but what the voting slip reveals, is that the full name of the Mariners' openly Tory chairman is John Shelton Fenty. Far be it from me to suggest that Diary readers place their X by the name of Gillian Frances Wallace instead, but it does rather support my theory that men become capitalists to compensate for being bullied at school.