Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 2 June 2009
2 June 2009
"Grants available for people without jobs" is a new subject line that's popped up in the Diary's spam folder recently. And how fitting that is. Certainly, there's a degree of thumb-twiddling called for from anyone who tries to write about football over the summer - but the Grimsby Telegraph must be heartily congratulated today on taking to a new level the search to create news out of minor events in the careers of FORMER Grimsby Town players. After recent articles beginning "FORMER Grimsby Town striker Jamie Forrester" and "FORMER Grimsby Town midfielder James Hunt", the local rag has bagged a brace today with "FORMER Grimsby Town defender Jason Crowe" and, in a feat of barrel scraping that is nothing short of astonishing, ""FORMER Grimsby Town loan keeper Nick Colgan". In filling column inches with news that Sunderland have released a player who made no appearances for Town's first team during a brief spell at Blundell Park A DECADE AND A HALF AGO, the Telegraph has truly raised the bar for us all.
It's not that today is even as eventless, from a GTFC perspective, as your average day in June, as the world's most inoffensive midfielder, Danny Boshell, has signed a new contract with the Mariners. After briefly claiming that the player's new deal was just one year in length, and then being corrected by the Telegraph, Town's superb new official website confirms that Bosh's contract will keep him with the Mariners until 2011, without, this time, apologising profusely for the error. Curiously, Danny is pictured on the SNOS clasping hands with Town's accounts manager Steve Wraith, who has presumably either been given responsibility for contract negotiations while Messrs Re-Newell and Stein leg it up and down the country checking out alternatives to Peter Sweeney, or is just shaking on a bet that Bosh won't start more than ten games next season.
After spending at least 20 minutes, meanwhile, without issuing a poorly phrased official GTFC statement about a throwaway comment on a web forum posted in Canada at 4am and read by approximately 13 people, John Fenty (Con) has dashed back into the limelight today with a chirpy and really quite nice rallying cry thing on the SNOS and a poignant plea for help in the Telewag. At first glance the Diary thought Town's Tory chairman was offering supporters a say in the running of the club - "If there are people out there who are interested in helping us and working with us, let's have a conversation" - but closer reading reveals that it's another appeal for new blood in the boardroom; in other words, only the rich need apply. Now I wouldn't dream of criticising the job JF(C) has done overall, of course, but given the job that the moneyed classes have done in running the global economy recently, perhaps now is not the best of moments to insist that GTFC remains a plutocracy.
"Whilst perusing all the leaflets that came with my season ticket renewal on Saturday," writes Loughborough Mariner in an email to the Diary, "I noticed that the club has replaced last year's Sponsor-a-Goal scheme with the new fangled Count-a-Point scheme, which boldly states that 'by taking part in this scheme you will be sponsoring all points that are earned in both league and cup games during the 2009-10 season.' Err, points in cup games? Have the FA Cup, League Cup and tin-pot paint trophy gone the same way as the European Cup and changed their format so that there will now be a league stage? I must have missed it when that was announced!" The Diary's season ticket renewal forms still haven't turned up in the post, Loughborough, so I can't yet comment with any great authority (no change there, then), but perhaps the 'points' in cup games referred to are just, for the purposes of the sponsorship scheme, notional, imaginary points - much like the points Town fans have dreamed of for most of the past decade.
On the subject of interesting means of travel to away games, Martin Wilson has been in touch. "I didn't travel to an away game on a Lambretta but did go by narrowboat once," he explains. "Well, not all the way - my brother-in-law has a narrowboat and lives near Stoke. His narrowboat was moored a few miles south and we met up with him and travelled on the morning of our game with Stoke on 19 November 1994. We moored up a short walk from Stoke's old ground and walked to the match, taking my nephew for his first look at the Mighty Mariners. Needless to say, that was his last look also, as we were thumped 3-0. The only other point of note that day was I remember we were huddled round the radio that evening, to hear the very first lottery draw. There was not much else to do on a narrowboat." Strangely enough, the Diary got off a train at Kidsgrove, near Stoke, last Saturday and was amazed by the bright orange-brown colour of the adjacent canal. Does anyone know whether it's supposed to look like that? Not that I spend half my life worrying about the colour of canal water - there just wasn't much else to do in Kidsgrove.
So - Lambretta, narrowboat... if you've travelled to a Town match in a similarly unusual way, the Diary would love to hear about it, even if asking makes me feel uncomfortably like Alan Partridge appealing for calls during his early morning slot on Radio Norwich, so email diary@codalmighty.com and tell us. And in tomorrow's Diary we'll look at your many suggestions for Andy Holt's itinerary as he travels between Coventry and Derby!