Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Monday 6 July 2009
6 July 2009
Today the Diary's mind is cast back to the hazy, crazy days of 2006 and Phil Barnes' first appearances for the Mariners. Barnes' stock with Town fans followed a sort of bell curve, whereby the disdain he is viewed with now, shortly after leaving the club, was matched in his first season at Blundell Park, with roughly a year of high esteem in the middle (peaking, perhaps, with his outstanding performance in the 2008 Dulux Cup final moral win over Bastard Franchise Scum). The biggest problem faced by poor Phil when he joined GTFC, of course, was that he wasn't Steve Mildenhall, whose one season at BP in 2005-06 was arguably the best from any Town keeper in the past three decades. And today the Diary knows how Barnes felt, because I face the unenviable task of following Saturday's one-off special Diary about Dale Ladson saying "Penis Peter Sweeney" on Mariners World the other day.
We stay on the subject of goalkeepers, though, because the Mariners' vacancy in this position was, it turns out, one of the subjects in the Ladson/Re-Newell interview that I didn't notice because I was laughing and cringing so much that I needed sedation. On the free bits of Town's superb new official website today, we learn that the manager is either "closing in on his goalkeeper target" (words of the SNOS writer) or simply "making progress on the goalkeeping front but we won't rush into it" (words of Mr Re-Newell). Oh.
Mike and some of the players are going to the pub tonight - but it's not a Gallimoresque booze-athon: it's an event to mark the relaunch of the Trawl, the well-known local tavern on Yarborough Road. Britain's embattled alehouses need all the help they can get right now, so it's great to see the club pitching in to support Grimsby's. Carry on like this and you never know, Grimsby people might actually start supporting their club in return.
And staying on the subject of the public house, Diary reader Phil Watson has emailed on the subject of Town-related hostelry names, which arose, you may recall, on this page last week. "I'm sure I remember seeing a pub called Livingstone's right outside Gillingham's ground when we went there one year with the great man in the Town team," insists Phil, adding: "Surprised I can't think of more..." Jeremy Baily, meanwhile, guides us gently towards Mariners Score in Lowestoft, Suffolk - a street, it would seem, rather than a pub, although there used to be a pub there called Mariners Inn. Ace! Jeremy has sent some other links which we'll look at tomorrow, cos it's gone two o'clock now and I really need to get this Diary up. Keep 'em coming, folks.