Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 20 November 2009

20 November 2009

Neil Woods has spent a lot of time over the past few years watching kids play football. Watching his interviews, it strikes your Guest Diarist how the softly spoken, mild-mannered Mr Woods would have made the best games teacher ever. And all those Saturday morning matches are pretty much the reason that Woods has taken both Coulson (see yesterday's Diary) and Nicky Featherstone on loan. Our caretaker has told everyone from Dale Ladson to Johnny the shoeshine man in Police Squad that he has watched the pair regularly ever since they were kids.

Featherstone, Woodses told the select few who are rich or daft enough to subscribe to Mariners Player, used to be a striker. The lad, he says, can play in the middle, on the right, or as a link-up man. I spent an idle hour yesterday reading reports of Hull reserve games and deduced that their (our) Nicky seemed to be quite an important player for Hull reserves. They missed him when he didn't play due to him having a go for the second first team in the League Cup. And Woods, who is as much of an enigma now as he was when he was a player, confided that little Nicky was a right handful of a player when he was about 14. Let's hope he still is when he's playing against those big rough types from Lincoln.

Lincoln are even money home favourites to beat Town tomorrow despite having as many players injured and suspended as we do. More even, probably. The Mariners are back to their average quota this season of one suspension (Atkinson) and the manager has said nobody is back from injury yet. One assumes that one (or possibly both) loanees will start, the 'possibly' part coming from the feeling that to start with both away from home is looking for trouble defensively. A Bore and Featherstone combo down our right-hand side might result in a torrent of pace and counterattacking trickery. But then again, when I think of Bore at Lincoln, the image of him sulking on the touchline, "disintegrating before our very eyes" (as CA match reporter Mr T Butcher put it) back in December 2006 never fails to torment me. Enough said?

That was the day we realised what we had in Justin Whittle. Will we ever see a heart like his in a Town shirt again? Somehow I don't think a side stuffed with loanees and squad players masquerading as first teamers will ever have the motivation or the sense to go to ask Johnny's advice - or Justin's, for that matter. It's a big city, gentle reader; oh for Justin Whittle now. See yer.