Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Wednesday 10 September 2008
10 September 2008
It's a good job there's something to tell you today about Grimsby Town Football Club's reserve side, youth team and heterosexual loaned-out wingers, because this week is proving so uneventful for the first XI that Danny Boshell has been assigned to deliver the latest edition of that "no, really, we're going to stop being rubbish soon, honest" press interview which supporters have grown so understandably weary of as the club has fallen apart over the past five years.
As the large hadron collider was turned on this morning and the entire Universe wasn't smashed to bits, Lord Alan Buckley breathed a sigh of disappointment and turned his attention back to more prosaic ways in which his team might escape relegation from the Football League this season. One of these is the return to fitness of key defensive duo Robbie Stockdale and Richard Hope, who will feature in some capacity for Town reserves at home to Rotherham tonight, alongside Chris Llewellyn, Andy Taylor and Javan Vidal. The presence of players of this calibre has moved the club's superb new official website to promise that Stuart Watkiss will send out "a strong side", while sensibly refraining from the suggestion that Alan Buckley might like to try the same thing sometime.
Next month's reserve side, also known as the youth team, have already seen some action this week. A short piece on the SNOS tells us that the young 'uns won 2-1 at Chesterfield last night in the first round of the Midlands Floodlit Youth Cup. There's a photo of a footballer on the page, who we are left to assume is either Nathan Dixon or Danny Freeman because they scored the goals and he sure ain't Neil Woods. "We will now play Hereford or Walsall in the second round at Blundell Park - it would be nice to renew old acquaintances with Walsall," youth boss Woods told the SNOS, which couldn't be bothered to contextualise his words in standard journalistic style by pointing out that the Myspace Mariners beat Walsall in the final of the competition two years ago and were knocked out by them at the semi-final stage in 2007 or something.
Last up, the Diary continues to follow the fortunes of Straight Peter Bore during his loan at York City. Today the sexually conventional wideman can be found discussing his favourite position with The Press, a York newspaper with an unassuming name. Unfortunately the reporter Dave Flett has badly misinterpreted SPB's key statement that "My preferred position is striker. That's where I'd always played until a couple of years ago when I was taken out and put on the right wing." Mr Flett mistakenly concludes from this that "the speedy Mariner first made his name as a striker at Blundell Park, bagging a brace at the age of 18 on his debut in a 3-2 victory over Boston" and "netted eight times in 21 League Two starts during that 2006-07 season, but has since been converted into a winger by Grimsby boss Alan Buckley". Oh, Dave! The lad played up front for the youth team and the reserves, but he played on the right wing as soon as Graham Rodger brought him into the first team in August 2006. Next time you catch up with him, just discuss orientation rather than position - he's much less ambiguous about that.