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Diary - Tuesday 21 October 2008

21 October 2008

Straight Peter Bore's two appearances under Mike Newell so far could mark the start of a longer spell of action. The new Mariners boss has made a big point of offering every player in the squad a blank slate - and nobody needs one more than the enigmatic Town forward and eschewer of bum fun, who proved as unable to secure a slot in the first team during his recent loan to non-League York City as he was at Blundell Park under Alan Buckley. The player has made a reasonable re-re-restart so far, sliding in to block a Wycombe defender from clearing Nick Hegarty's goal from off the line and, er, well, we didn't go to Exeter but it said somewhere he'd done alright there. "I have got to show a bit of faith in him and see if he can deliver over a number of games," No-Nickname Newell has told the Grimsby Telegraph, showing an approach that contrasts markedly with that of his predecessor, who had latterly taken to bringing on Bore as an 89th-minute substitute just to take the piss out of him. One thing's for sure: if SPB doesn't take the chance being generously offered to him by his third GTFC manager and fourth overall then his undoubted talent may be frittered away for good. He may never knowingly drink in a gay bar but he's certainly sipping pink pina coladas in the last chance saloon.

When Bore runs out to face Luton tonight it may be in a Town starting line-up that remains the same for a third game on the trot. I wonder when was the last time that happened. Maybe the start of the 2003-04 season or something. The Mariners' only new injury worry is over James Hunt, who did something nasty to his hip at Exeter the other day; more team news for both sides and all the usual stuff can be found in Cod Almighty's remarkable pre-match factfile, so go there and read it.

"Unless I missed something," writes Joe Mooney in an email to the Diary, "it seems that the Town feature in last week's Football League review in the Guardian was not mentioned, which seems unlike the Diary, leading me to believe it has been missed. Perhaps it pales into insignificance when compared to a proper feature but I thought it was worth a mention, albeit a week late." The clue is in the section of Joe's email that began "Perhaps it pales" because, notwithstanding its excellent recent feature just after Newell got the Town job, if the Guardian thinks it can trot out a perfunctory little fucking bullet-point list every Monday by way of coverage of the weekend's events in the second, third and fourth divisions and somehow think it's done right by the millions of people who support the 72 clubs therein then the Guardian can fuck right off and piss up a rope.

At least this is more honest than the tabloids, however, which 'cover' every game in the lower leagues by cobbling together a report from newsfeeds, Ceefax and guesswork and as often as not get the names of half the team wrong. As a sometime Cod Almighty contributor you'd think Mat Hare would know better than to read the Sun - but at least he's got the good sense, he insists, to only look at the pictures. And, it transpires, to email the Diary in response to yesterday's, er, Diary, where Clav Divs and I were mulling over the "There's only one..." chant and its recent setting to a different tune. "So 'Blue Moon' can be used for bisyllabic strikers can it?" says Mat, and offers this wilfully perverse example:

Matt Tees
I saw you standing alone
With no defender nearby
Without an offside flag shown

Matt Tees
I knew just what you were there for
You really looked like you would score
The goal we were all waiting for

"That's a good start surely," concludes Mr Hare. "Now if someone could just finish it off that'd be great, ta." Well, you heard the man. It's not like there's any transfer news to fill the space.

Lastly today, but not leastly, Russell Moseley writes: "I saw Town at Exeter on Saturday and was heartened (a) by the fact that they were considerably better than when I saw them lose there in the cup a few seasons ago, and (b) by the reassurance offered by my brother-in-law (a Grecians supporter) that Town were by no means the most hopeless outfit to be seen at St James's [sic] Park this season (he specifically mentioned Gillingham)." Thanks, Russell. I don't suppose you fancy writing a match report for us the next time Town play in the south-west, do you?