Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Monday 8 September 2008
8 September 2008
The Diary was there at Mansfield, nearly six months ago, the last time Town won a match in the league. I wasn't planning on going, but it got round to lunchtime and there wasn't much else doing, and Mrs Diary suggested she drive the two of us down there to see if the Mariners could press on with that tremendous run of form which had taken us to the brink of the play-offs. It was bloody freezing for late March, but Alan Buckley's side warmed the cockles with a battling, committed display and a star showing from opening goalscorer Peter Till. The struggling hosts equalised early in the second half but the Bosh claimed a deserved away win with a smashing 20-yarder, lifting Town to within five points of the play-off places with 21 left to play for. Mrs Diary and I went home shivering but chuffed, and probably phoned up for a curry or something before too much longer.
Two days later, on Easter Monday, with the Dulux Cup final approaching, Town threw away a half-time lead against Brentford, who were pleasantly surprised to find themselves leaving Blundell Park with three points. "Wembley'll be out of the way soon and they can start tackling again," was the hopeful verdict of the 'Take the positive' section in Cod Almighty's post-match factfile. Since Mansfield, however, Town have played 12 games in the league, winning none, drawing two and losing ten, scoring four goals and conceding a metric fuckton. Still, at least Gillingham wasn't a fair reflection; and it won't seem to matter quite so much anyway when they turn on the large hadron collider later this week and the entire Universe implodes into a single superdense particle. No, this time we're not talking about Tom Newey.
Should the unthinkable happen and life as we know it continue beyond Wednesday teatime, the Mariners face a short trip to Scunthorpe United in the second round of this season's Dulux Cup early in October. Many fans of both clubs will doubtless be working themselves up into a frenzy of hate already. In the Diary's view, however, these sentiments are misplaced. Scunthorpe are a small, hopeless club in a shit part of the country where everyone is cynical and nobody much cares whether the local football team lives or dies - exactly like Grimsby. We're on the same side. Daft local rivalries among small clubs distract our attention from the real enemy. Because if we're gonna hate anyone, we ought to hate the bastards with the money who formed the Premier League to squeeze the life out of the deepest football culture in the world (and destroy the England team, incidentally), and send clubs like ours to bankruptcy. Our real local rivals are Liverpool, because it's their shirts and their televised matches that the football consumers of Grimsby and Cleethorpes spend their money on - instead of being football fans and supporting their own club.