Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 11 November 2009

11 November 2009

Having walked away from one cup final in the summer which they would probably have won, Grimsby Town have gone on to subsequently get themselves comprehensively knocked out of all three cup competitions left to them. Losing 3-1 at Leeds last night in the Dulux Cup seemed inevitable. A bigger defeat seemed on the cards in the first ten minutes as our fragile defence hyperventilated. But some cracking goalkeeping from striker Forbes seemed to spur the Town on for a bit until the tie was lost with two goals in six minutes just before half time.

If your unexpected Guest Diarist sounds like a crap match reporter, well, you can put that down to just getting an email asking me to write this and the fact that I watched the match in all its HD splendour on evilSKY last night. It was also pleasing to note that there were several moody free video streams of the match available on that interweb. Given more time on the ball, as you usually do against higher-class opposition, Town looked a lot better side. But we won't get that at Northampton on Saturday so, although caretaker Woods saw lots of positives, whether they will translate into league points remains a matter for long conjecture. Whatever, that volley from Sweeney was absolutely sublime consolation.

My only other comment is to ask whether someone has been introducing our Gallic striker to the pleasures of fast food - he looks chunkier, doesn't he? And slower.

Now the notoriously busy Mr Diary just found the time to email me and ask if I would look at your correspondence. Well, here's one from a few days ago from Jim Waterson: "You might like to know that the excellent YorkCityTV service have free-to-view highlights of the Grimsby vs York Yoof game on YouTube. It's a volunteer-run service and used to upload highlights from every home game. That is until Cambridge manager Martin Ling told his York counterpart after a game that he'd sat online studying the video and working out how to defend against our corners. That's how shit this league is - no club can afford a scouting system and they're reduced to huddling around a laptop for tactics. Don't make the mistake of thinking that getting relegated would be anything but the start of a long, painful non-League death."

And Richard Lord has been on this morning to discuss last night: "That old theory of relativity has come to the fore once again - after Town lost 2-0 at home to Bath, a couple of Leeds fans I know are actually embarrassed with their 3-1 winning scoreline against Town. I've already pointed out that, going by goalscorers on the night, it was actually 2-2, and that Peter Sweeney's goal pisses all over Tony Yeboah's (it doesn't, but it was worth saying to further annoy them). It's funny - I've come to work almost feeling smug about Tuesday, while the Leeds fans are on the defensive, admitting that they couldn't do a better job than Bath City in terms of giving us a good pasting on their own patch." And the ref - he wasn't just extremely OK: he was embarrassingly good. I didn't even know he was there. Can we have him every week? He gets plus points from me simply for not giving Leeds a penalty or sending off Big Baz."

Now that's what I call taking the positive. See yer.