Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 6 November 2009

6 November 2009

It seems hard for your Guest Diarist to strike a tone with today's Diary. The news that more and yet more fine young North East Lincolnshire lads are getting killed for less and less plausible reasons hangs over me like a black cloud. Normally I'm not one for too many pre-match elegiac ceremonies. But an expression by the Town fans that we are all thinking of the families, the friends, and everyone who knew them seems like a good call to me tomorrow. We will never forget them.

As for Saturday's home cup tie with Bath City, well, Chairman Fenty must be wishing he had gone to that seminar on how to use fruit analogies effectively when publicly speaking after all. It may be a New Labour thing John, but that Miliband bloke is a closet Tory really. Waving a banana at the camera and speaking of the entire fruit both lend themselves to suggestion as to where the offending musa acuminata should be stuffed. There will be a banana in the building tomorrow alright, but I doubt anyone can be arsed to do owt with it if we lose.

That Mariners Player has decided to give its paying customers just under three minutes of Neil Woodseses' preview. And nearly nine minutes of The Jarman talking about his love for Newell, his girlfriend and playing up front with Alan Smith for Newcastle on some computer game or other. We learn that Atkinson has trained for the last two days and might make it, that Forbes's experience tells him that something tweaked in the groin area and The Jarman has one shake for breakfast, one at lunch and a balanced meal in the evening. Worth every penny, eh?

Bath will send a few up to the match tomorrow but I get a strong feeling that the Town turnout will be thin with everyone having to buy a ticket. Some are predicting as few as two and a half thousand. Town will have just two suspended players this week: Lancashire (sent off) and Sweeney (five cautions). Hegggaarty is still not right so may not play either, I gather. To me it looks like our side, a bit weakened, and a bit shit, will be doing well if they get a draw against motivated semi-professional opponents up for one of the bigger matches in their careers.

As for the club accounts, well, Coun Fenty keeps lending the club money to pay for his executive mistakes. Within the sizeable losses accrued these past few years are the monies wasted on the new stadium (he should have listened to Alec King, who told him it was a pipe dream in 2004) and the annual rounds of monies wasted every year when Fenty gets cross and has to pay off yet another manager. Being a fan and being relatively rich are not enough: he needs to stop lending us baskets of fish and instead get an executive and management team who know how to run a small club prudently and efficiently: who know how to fish, for God's sake.

I have to confess I won't be going tomorrow - I'll miss being there and I hope they win, or at least stand in the right places and try. And I'll spare a thought for the lads who'll never get to go to a match again. See yer.