Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 20 July 2009

20 July 2009

Clearly, you could look at it in one of two ways. You could note the vocal threats made by Luton fans to Mike Newell during earlier games, taking into particular consideration the comments of neutral locals that an element of them seemed intent on disruption or violence, and of the eyewitness account that one Luton fan angrily confronted Newell face-to-face at half time. You could further note the Hot Fuzz inertia of the Devon police, who seemed unable or unwilling to comprehend this threat, and the intransigence of the Hatters hierarchy in refusing to countenance a pretty insignificant change to the kick-off time. And you could conclude that GTFC had no option but to withdraw from Sunday's final of the Sponsor's Pre-Season Kickabout in the Sunshine Pot in the interests of public order and the personal safety of their manager.

That's one way you could look at it. The other way you could look at it is that Town's team management jumped at the chance to undo some of the mess made earlier by the club, who agreed to take part in a tournament that could involve four games in five days - the final of which would fall one day before the Lincolnshire Cup game against Scunthorpe tonight - and couldn't say no to a proposal for £££Leeds £££United £££to £££visit on Tuesday, not to mention Saturday's game at Scarborough Athletic, which seems to have been expertly arranged to coincide with both the first XXI's sojourn in the south-west and a trip to Scotland by the youth team. Faced with this sort of unprecedented chaos of pre-season fixture congestion, you might suppose, Messrs Re-Newell and Stein quite understandably made full use of a flimsy pretext to withdraw.

So in which of those two ways do you look at it? It's a tough call, but whatever the truth, the perception of many will be coloured by the Mariners' long track record of administrative disaster - which was extended spectacularly last week when red-faced club officials had to own up to a "misprint" on the season ticket renewal leaflets they eventually got round to sending out, which promised free entry to this summer's friendly matches for everyone buying a season ticket - when in fact it turned out we were entitled to no such thing. Pretty big misprint. (And incidentally, why is the Telewag ignoring this? You can report positively on the football club without being a one-eyed propaganda machine, folks.) The Diary honestly doesn't know what to think - but I know what many people will suspect, and nobody could be blamed one bit for assuming the worst, given the astonishing depths of incompetence regularly plumbed by the backroom staff at Blundell Park.

By the way, Luton fans, don't shoot the messenger, eh.

All these to-ings and fro-ings were of course brought about by Town's 3-2 win over Yeovil on Friday and 4-1 victory against Rushden & Diamonds on Saturday. Of the latter, the neutral North Devon Journal observes that "the final scoreline was harsh on Rushden who had enough chances to have at least taken the match to a penalty shoot-out". Really? So it would seem. The Mariners' superb new official website, in its minimal account of the game, describes it as "a comfortable win" - but its viewpoint is deliberately and amusingly contested by the Grimsby Telegraph, which calls the win "far from comfortable". There is always the possibility that the SNOS is a lone voice in the wilderness, the lost prophet howling the truth amid a world of falsehood, but in this case at least one is inclined to doubt it.

Back to Luton for today's final item, as former Hatters left-back Sol Davis has joined Town on trial. So much for that squad of 18, eh? Speaking of strength in depth to cover all positions, the Diary is away for the next couple of days but with a bit of luck the CA team should be able to fill in, and I'll be back on Thursday with a bit of luck. See yers!